
Class '?^\G??5 

Book /ELS 

Copyii^htN"____ 



COFi'RICHT DEPOSIT. 



RECORDS 

OF 

A LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP 

1807 — 1882 






RECORDS OF A 
LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP 

1807 :: 1882 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

AND 

WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS 

EDITED BY H. H. F. 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

MDCCCCX 






COPYRIGHT, 1910 

BY HORACE HOWARD FURNESS 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

THE PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS IN 
THIS VOLUME ARE FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
MADE BY F. GUTEKUNST, PHILADELPHIA 

780 COPIES PRINTED 
AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 



©CIA278150 



INTRODUCTION 

X 

^ In the invaluable Journals of Mr. Emerson, now is- 

suing from the press under the excellent editing of his 
son, there occur, now and again, regretful assertions by 
Mr. Emerson, when introspectively analyzing his own 
mind, of the coldness of his temperament. At the early 
age of twenty he taxes himself with this lack of gen- 
iality, and asserts, that < What is called a warm heart, 
I have not.' ^ — Again, « It seems I am cold, and when 
shall I kindle f I was born cold. My bodily habit is cold. 
I shiver in and out ; don't heat to the good purposes called 
enthusiasm a quarter so quick and kindly as my neigh- 
bours.' ^ — Again, < / am cold and solitary.' ^ — Again, 
* Most of the persons whom I see in my own house I see 
across a gulf. I cannot go to them nor they come to me. 
J^othing can exceed the frigidity and labour of my speech 
with such.' ^ 

In all these reflections, we must bear in mind, how- 
ever, that they are his own judgements on himself, con- 
fided to a private Journal, and, therefore, likely to be too 
severe. Indeed, his son asserts it to be certain that he 
^greatly magnified his supposed lack of sympathetic quali- 

' Vol. i, p. 366. » Vol. ii, p. 166. 

• Vol. ii, p. 123. -♦ lb. i,p. 361. 



C vi 3 

ties.' ^ It is not for one instant to be supposed that this 
coldness included his domestic relations. Within the sacred 
circle of home his love was unconfined. This cold reserve 
existed only outside, in the world; the nearer the approach 
to the warmth of home and hearth, the more this coldness 
thawed. May, this is intimated by himself in a letter to 
Margaret Fuller, written in 1 843, whereof the following 
extract may not unfitly introduce the present collection of 
letters : — 

* In Philadelphia I had great pleasure in chatting with 
Fumess,for we had ten or a dozen years to go over and 
compare notes upon. . . . And he is the happiest com- 
panion. Those are good companions to whom we have the 
keys. . . . Furness is my dear gossip, almost a gossip 
for the gods, there is such a repose and honour in the ?nan. 
He is a hero-worshipper, and so collects the finest anec- 
dotes, and told very good stories of Mrs. Butler [Mrs. 
Fanny KembW^, Dr. Channing, etc. I meant to add, a 
few lines above, that the tie of schoolfellow and playmate 
from the nursery onward is the true clanship and key that 
cannot be given to a?iother.' 

It is Mr. Emerson's correspondence with this ' Fur- 
ness ' that is here printed. I cannot but believe that it 
will serve to lighten the severity of the criticisms re- 
corded by Mr. Emerson hiinselfon the coldness of his own 
temperament, and also to show that, in its final analysis, 

* Emerson in Concord, p. 212. 



this coldness was merely a shrinking sensitiveness that 
only needed to he dissipated through the assurance af- 
forded by a proved or lifelong friendship. 

Dr. Holmes says that Mr. Emerson was 'constitu- 
tionally fastidious.' ' This might account for his reserve, 
hut possibly might not have been likely to escape the 

* searchlight' which Mr. Etnerson himself was wont to 
turn so mercilessly upon all recesses in his own mind. 

In speaking of Mr. Emerson's dignified deportment. 
Dr. Holmes asks, * What man was he who could lay his 
hand familiarly upon his shoulder and call him PFaldo ^ ' ^ 
/ am very certain that my father would not have hesi- 
tated on any fit occasion to lay his hand familiarly on his 
old friend's shoulder, hut he would not, possibly, have 
called him « PFaldo ' — it would have been, very probably, 

* Ralph.' It was not until College days that * PFaldo ' 
was adopted, and my father's admiration and love origi- 
nated in boyhood, and in them * Ralph ' was imbedded. 
He tried to change to * PFaldo,' but never with complete 
success. I have heard him when talking to Mr. Emerson, 
use both names indifferently. 

My father was never careful in the preservation of let- 
ters. There is many a gap in the present collection due to 
loss and to the importunities of autograph hunters. In 
several cases the dates are conjectural ; some have been 

' Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 366. "" lb. p. 368. 



supplied by the kindness of Dr. Edward W. Emerson, 
without whose gracious permission I should not have ven- 
tured on this publication oj his father' s private letters. 

In the ensuing pages neither correspondent seems 
weary of referring to the prowess achieved, in childhood, 
by the one as a poet and by the other as an artist. A con- 
summation in both realms survives in a ^ Poem,' called 
Fortus, by Ralph Emerson, aged ten, and illustrated by 
William Furness, aged eleven. 

Mr. Cabot discovered' that this 'Poem ' is still in ex- 
istence ; and with a clue supplied through him, I was en- 
abled to communicate with the fortunate possessors of the 
time-worn and faded MS, now almost in the hund?'edth 
year of its existence. 

The present representative of the original owner, Mr. 
Edward Parish JsToyes, to whom my thanks are greatly 
due and gladly given, at once, with courteous liberality, 
sent the MS for use in the present publication. There 
are but two illustrations, one on the front page, the other 
on the last ; neither, I think, can be regarded without 
a smile, tolerant yet broad. Be it not supposed that great 
value is to be attached to these infantile trimnphs of 
either poet or artist; as the solitary records of those early 

' ' " Fortus," with Dr. Fumess's illustrations, still survives, in the 
possession of the Rev. Daniel Noyes at By field.' — Memoir, p. 43. 
Footnote. 



years they may be regarded^ howevery as are straws to 
a drowning man, not because, as has been said, there is 
any value in the straws, but because they are the only 
things there. And yet I do not shame to say that the 
childish handwriting and stilted language of the little 
poet, and the anatomical monstrosity of horse and rider 
by the little artist are, to me, an admirer and the son, 
replete with a tender charm ."^ 

Associated with Mr. Emerson and my father in very 
early childhood there was a third little boy, Sam Brad- 
ford by name. Long years afterward it happened that 
two of the comrades in this triple friendship, simultane- 
ously begged the third, Mr. Emerson, to pay them a visit ; 
whereupon Mr. Emerson wrote to Sam Bradford^ that 
IVilliam Fumes s and himself ' were first acquainted at 
Mrs. Whitwelts School, — aged 4^5, — & you & I 
never until 5 or 6 ; so he plainly has the oldest claim,' 
and then he added * / believe all three of us have agreed 
not to grow old, — certainly not to each other.' 

In some MS Reminiscences of my father, there is the 
following : — « PTith R. JV. E. is associated my good 
life-long friend, Sam Bradford (now for many years 
past Treasurer of The Reading Railroad). I remember 
having those two boys to spend the afternoon with me. 

' The Poem, with its Illustrations, is given in the Appendix. 
' Seepo5<, p. 164. 



C X 2 

JVe played on thejioorin my mother's chamber. At tea 
— my mother & we hoys were the only company — I do 
not recollect where the rest of the family were, — we had 
cake on the table, and Sam cried : " Oh Ralph, you have 
had two pieces ! " The circumstance is imprinted on my 
memory by the fact that, after my guests were gone, my 
mother reverted to it, & told me that « It was not proper 
to remark on another's eating" — I have often thought 
that ever since R. JV. E. has always had two pieces — 
double — not indeed of cake or bread, tho' I believe he 
has always had abundance of those, but of that richer 
food which has strengthened him to feed us all.' 

< Sam ' was the son of Sheriff Bradford, of Boston, 
whose offcial cocked hat and profusion of gold lace cre- 
ated awe and fear in my father' s young breast. Under 
the gold lace there beat, however, a gentle and generous 
heart. For several years after the death of Mr. Emerson's 
father, when the widow and her children were strug- 
gling with dire poverty, there came every three months, 
from an unknown hand, the gift often dollars ; equiva- 
lent at present to five times as much, I suppose, in pur- 
chasing power. In a letter ' to his brother fVilliam, after 
Sheriff Bradford' s death, when Ralph was sixteen years 
old, the latter says : — * The quarterly ten-dollar present 
from the ^* unknown friend" has been discontinued two 
quarters, which confirms mother's suspicion of Sheriff 

' See Cabot, Memoir, Vol. i, p. 5 1 . 



Bradford's being the source.* It is pleasant to know that 
there was this unseen and unknown bond linking in 
friendship little Sam and little Ralph. 

In May, 1875, Mr. Emerson was in Philadelphia, 
and the happy thought was started of having him, and 
Mr. Sam Bradford, and my father, * The Three Boys,' 
photographed in a group. It was taken in more than one 
pose; one of these has been published, I believe. But the 
first pose, which was discarded, is to me, in one regard, 
far and away the best, in that it is eminently character- 
istic both of Mr. Emerson, and of my father, who was, 
at the photographic instant, so lost in gazing with admir- 
ation at his friend, that he utterly forgot himself and, in 
resting his face in his hand, quite hid his own features. 
This gaze Mr. Emerson returned and unconsciously re- 
sponded to it ; his 'face is as a book wherein one may 
read ' his lifelong love for my father from childhood on- 
wards. In no other portrait of Mr. Emerson that I have 
ever seen has his benignant and exquisitely szveet and 
characteristic smile been so happily caught. My father had 
a photographic enlargement made of the head alone of 
Mr. Emerson. It hung until his death in his study, and he 
never varied the assertion that it is the best ever taken ; in 
it he could distinctly and vividly trace the features and the 
expression of the little boy in petticoats, with whom he 
played with wooden blocks on thefloorofhis mother's room. 



Twice the position of the three sitters was changed by 
the photographer. But with what disastrous results I 
Three respectable, elderly gentlemen more self-conscious 
it would be hard to match I One of these changes is also 
here reproduced. 

There is one topic which, during several years, forms 
the subject of some of the following letters, and needs, 
perhaps, a few words of explanation. 

In 1 8^3 there was published by Carey & Hart of this 
city, an Annual, called The Gift. Annuals such as 
Heath's Book of Beauty, The Souvenir, The Keep- 
sake, etc. abounded at that time, at home and abroad, but 
The Gift assumed a position loftier and more patriotic 
than that of all others published in this country. * The 
present volume of The Gift is,' say the publishers in their 
preliminary Advertisement, * in every respect an Ameri- 
can work. The contributions are by American authors, 
— the illustrations by American artists.' 

Among the names of the contributors appear Mrs. C. 
M. Kirkland, Charles West Thompson, Mrs. Sigoumey, 
W. G. Simms, and Edgar A. Toe, who contributed 
< The Pit and the Pendulum.' Paintings by D. Hunt- 
ington, Inman, Malbone, Sully and others, were finely 
engraved by John Cheney and J. I. Pease. Among * An- 
nuals,* fashionable at that time in America, it was easily 
the first. To this day, the engravings cannot be over- 



[ xiii ] 

looked in any history of the art in Americay and Poe's 
story is of enduring interest. 

The leading spirit and the forming hand in its pub- 
lication was Mr. Edzvard L. Carey, a young man of 
culture and refinement, whose frail health confined him 
to his home, where he surrounded himself with choice 
works of art by native and British artists in painting and 
sculpture. He gave timely and generous encouragement 
to all young artists in whom he discerned capabilities of 
eminent promise. It zvas, I believe, from him that such 
artists as Huntington, Mount, and Leutze received their 
early recognition. It was through his influence and 
greatly through his means that Leutze was sent to study 
art in Diisseldotf. 

My father was a warm personal friend of Mr. Carey, 
by whom he was consulted on sundry matters of detail in 
the literary 'make up' of this edition of The Gift. In the 
preparation of the edition for 1 844, however, my father 
took a more active interest, and, in the subsequent issues, 
and when The Gift was merged in The Diadem, he be- 
came, wholly as a labour of love, the chief editor. Then 
it was that he turned at once to his old friend, Mr. Emer- 
son, as their correspondence shows, and with what suc- 
cess is evinced by ' The Poet's Apology,' *Loss and Gain,' 
'A Fable,' 'The World Soul,' and others, which ap- 
peared in these Annuals ; I believe for the first time. 

Mr. Carey died in 1845, after the material had be^n 



[ xiv ] 

gathered and arranged for The Diadem for 1 846. 
There was one other issue of it in 1847. Buty deprived 
of Mr. Carey' s fostering and liberal hand, this issue was, 
I believe, the last. 

A list of Mr, Emerson's contributions, in prose and 
verse, to The Gift and The Diadem, will be found in 
the Appendix, 

In my father's copy of Mr. Cabofs Memoir, I find, 
in my sister's handwriting, the following words by my 
father. They were evidently uttered in compliance with 
a request from her. I cannot but believe that they will be 
here as reverently read as they were lovingly and rever- 
ently spoken : — 

* / have little to say of our sainted friend that has not 
been said better by Mr. Cabot &' others — / cannot re- 
member when he was not given to letters, any more than 
I can recollect when I first knew him. We learned our 
A. B.C. together. I have only one reminiscence of his en- 
joying a boy' splay, &that was on thefioorofmy mother's 
chamber in our old house in Federal Street, where I was 
born. 

* IVe went to the Public Latin School together. The 
morning session of the school closed at XL o'clock. He & 
I went together for an hour to a private school kept from 
XL to XIL by Master JVebb in one of the other schools. 
We went solely to learn to write and to cypher — The 



schoolhouse was large, the private pupils few. We two 
hoys were allowed to sit apart from the other hoys, where 
we pleased ; we always sat together , Ralph and I — he 
was between 9 and 1 o years of age — / was eleven. He 
used to write verses about our naval battles, such as the 
fight between '< The Constitution " and " The Guerrier" 
— to my great admiration, which he repaid by admiring 
my drawings — / was somewhat famous as an artist in 
those days. The Boston Huzzars, who at that time 
adopted a magnificent uniform, furnished superb subjects 
for my slate-pencil. JVhen, much later in life, we were 
separated and I received his first letter, I recollect I was 
struck with the flowing ease of his handwriting, remem- 
bering how at Mr. Webb's school he labored over his copy- 
book, with his tongue out of his mouth, and working up 
and down with the strokes of his pen — I remember too, 
hozv he sneered at me, because I gave one of my drawings 
to another boy in exchange for one by him, which repre- 
sented merely a building; he was given to architectural 
art, and depicted edifices ivith most imposing colonnades. 
Ralph had genius in abundance, but no talent. I never 
knew him attempt to draw anything, not even the con- 
ventional cat with the triangular face, which almost any 
boy or girl could do and does do. 

* Miss Ellen Emerson said to me on the day of her 
father's funeral, that her mother had not been terrified, 
as she herself had been, at the prospect, had his life been 



[ xvi ] 

prolonged. The failure of his memory was so great, that, 
had he lingered longer, he might, as is not seldom the 
case, have failed to recognise his own children. Had he 
lived and been reduced to this condition, I believe that 
Sam Bradford and I, associated as we were with his 
earliest years, would have been the last he would have 
failed to remember. 

* / cannot analyse his character, and tell you what 
manner of person he was. One trait was very conspicu- 
ous, the perfect serenity of his temper to all who had any 
acquaintance with him. He had the closest affinity with 
all that is good and true. I asked him once, as we were 
walking together here, in Philadelphia, if he did not see 
something good in the physiognomy of the people he met 
in the streets, * O yes,' he exclaimed, Hhe angel Gabriel 
is ever coming round the corner.' It was this disposition 
that led him to magnify everyone who said anything that 
struck him and into which he himself probably put a sig- 
nificance that the speaker had no thought of. Many of his 
geese were swans. 

* But, I repeat, I have neither the wish nor the ability 
to dissect 7ny friend, and show how exquisite was his or- 
ganization. As Wordsworth says, in his Essay on Epi- 
taphs, we do not willingly analyse the characters of those 
we love and revere, the light of love in our hearts is suf- 
ficient evidence of a body of worth in our friends, from 
zvhich that love and reverence have proceeded. 



C xvii ;] 

* My own obligations to my life-long friend are beyond 
telling. Tou know how deeply and how long I have been 
trying to ascertain the simple historical truth co?iceniing 
Him, whom I have learned to consider the greatest by far 
of all our teachers. Emerson has said things here and 
there, that have flashed light as from Heaven upon the 
pages of the J^ew Testament as I have read them. 

'W.HF. 

*March-i 888- 

In reprinting the ensuing letters, the only liberty 
which has been taken, is to supply in brackets a word ac- 
cidentally omitted in the MS, and this is done not as a 
proof of the Editor's superior intelligence, but by way, 
of assurance to the reader that the MS has been faith- 
fully followed. Lack of punctuation or of quotation 
marks, abbreviations, or even mis-spellings, it is, I think, 
no part of an editor to correct. They are evidences of haste 
or of character, or of familiarity, and, as such, should be 
preserved. Certainly any intelligent reader is quite as 
competent as an editor to correct or supply them. 

H. H. F. 
September, 1910. 



LETTERS 



Concord, 24 October, 1837. 

My dear friend, 

I heartily thank you for your kindest letter & 
affectionate overestimate after your wont, of an old 
friend; I plead guilty to ingratitude so irresistibly 
brought home to me by your malicious recollection 
of sacred truth whose triumph ceased awhile. Our 
being is still unique — Childhood & manhood are 
not two things but one so long as we know that 
somewhere lives a good friend who is witness to the 
whole thing. So neither you nor Sam Bradford nor 
I are like to deny ourselves. And for you, I almost 
grudge now to break the silence we have kept which 
had its own charm inasmuch as the good understand- 
ing was perfect. 

Who can help loving Lamb of whom you speak so 
warmly, and who that loves felicity of speech but must 
account him the master of it in this age. And yet I do 
not read him again. Hedge calls me too utilitarian. I 
crave bread and beauty of all my books, and Lamb 
who is the Benvenuto Cellini of writers adds nothing 
to my stock with all his enchasing. Yet I certainly 



i: 2 1 

read that letter in Moxon's Recollections of Cole- 
ridge about pig with unmixed glee. 

Carlyle sent me out sometime since a copy of his 
History. I dully plotted how to get some twenty 
copies over, that he might be benefitted, but two 
days ago somebody [^said] you might have made 
$500 for the man out of Sartor. So today I went 
to Boston to see the booksellers & have told them 
maugre James Munroe's Proposals that I am going 
to publish this book for the Author's benefit & they 
may offer me the best terms they will. Tomorrow 
Hilliard & Gray will give me an estimate. We think 
of a cheap book, two vols, about the size of Sartor to 
contain the three. It is itself an admirable work — 
very interesting narrative, every character sharply 
drawn, though sometimes you may doubt whether a 
character is historically true, but the story is as true 
as sagacity research & sifting could make it. So you 
must bid all good men & libraries buy the book as 
Teufelsdroek is to have every dollar we can make. 

Did you ever meet a young man who keeps school 
in Philadelphia Benjamin P. Hunt. When a boy at 
school to me in Chelmsford here he was a philosopher 
whose conversation made all the social comfort I had. 
He went to Cambridge but quitted College in some 
disgust & has been at P. ever since. He was here 
last summer & I thought the people he lived with 



i: 3 ] 

had done him no good, but meeting Alcott at my 
house he seemed suddenly to reverence the dreams 
of his youth. If you should meet him, do salute the 
Good Angel in him. 

I shall always love you for loving Alcott. He is 
a great man: the god with the herdmen of Admetus. 
I cannot think you know him now, when I remem- 
ber how long he has been here ; for he grows every 
month. His conversation is sublime. Yet when I see 
how he is underestimated by cultivated people I 
fancy none but I has heard him talk. 

Will you not come hither next summer? If so, do 
come & spend a day with me. My wife reads you & 
venerates you — then I brag that I went to school 
with him to Miss Nancy Dickson and spelt out the 
House that Jack built, on his red handkerchief. 

With my regards to Mrs. Furness & my love, 
when you see him, to Sam Bradford, I am 
Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo Emerson. 



II 



Concord, 29 December, 1837. 

My dear Sir, 

Messrs. Little & Brown ask me what they shall 
do with the copies of Carlyle for the subscribers you 
have so kindly procured at Philadelphia ; and they 
inform me in reply to their own question that the best 
way to save expense in their distribution is to address 
them in a package to you & beg you to engage one 
of those persons who run for booksellers to carry them 
round to the subscribers & receive the price. This 
they tell me is a regular business, is paid by a small 
fee & that your bookseller can designate for you a 
person without giving you any inconvenience. On this 
representation I ventured to direct them to send the 
books to you. If they are wrong & this course in- 
volves trouble to you, you will of course commit them 
directly to a bookseller & I will pay his commissions 
for distributing them. You perceive that what makes 
us bold to put the Ways & Means on you is to keep 
for Teufelsdroek as much as we can of the half dollar 
which he saves of booksellers commission by the sub- 
scription. — Have I told you the bargain we drive ? 



CO, 

The cost of a copy $1.12 or near it, the booksellers 
commission 20 per cent on retail price 2.50 =50 
cents the copy. Therefore if all sell, Carlyle shall 
have 1.37 on every subscribed copy & 87 cents on 
every one sold otherwise. 

My unskilfulness has made a long story of a simple 
fact & I throw myself on your kind construction in 
regard to the whole matter. I am wading — some- 
times overhead — in the most ambitious Course of 
Lectures — a little precipitately undertaken — once 
a week a new subject, & each subject the Universe 
seen from one side ; so that the Lecturers task seems 
to me nothing less than Puck's « I will put a girdle 
round about the world in forty minutes" — say sixty 
rather. And my health being slender I can scarce 
remember out of the creative hubbub in the brain 
whether ever I thanked you for your subscription 
list & the love it manifested. I hope the Scottish man 
[^Carlyle] will come & heartily thank you himself 
one day. Meantime I am quite sure you will like 
the book & owe it happy hours. Affectionately 
Your old friend 

R. Waldo Emerson 



Ill 



^ Concord, 20 September 1838 

My dear friend, 

I have already delayed too long to answer your 
kindest letter thinking I would wait for my promised 
book ' ( which, no doubt, is in Boston for me, where I 
have not been for a fortnight) but I will wait no longer. 
It is the pleasure of your affection & nobleness to ex- 
aggerate always the merits of your friends — I know 
the trait of old from Mr. Webb's school onward, and 
so I delight now as much as then in the smiles & com- 
mendations of my Maecenas. But how can you keep 
so good a nature from boy to man. Nobody but you 
& my brother Edward would praise the verses to the 
immortal Hull ! nor could be induced, though I read 
them never so often. And now the case is scarcely 
altered ; everybody thinks my things shocking, but 
you and a few generous hearts who must be to me 
for Edward. I love to know you are there. Every 
word that comes or ever came to me from you or of 
you is good (excepting for the last year tidings of ill 

^ Jesus and his Biographers. By W. H. Furness, Philadelphia, 
1838. 



i: 7 3 

health ) and every year is adding the riches of high 
accomphshments to your image. It would please me 
better if once in a year I could shake hands with you, 
& by and by, — for old friends are becoming rare with 
me, — I think we may both be willing to go some 
miles to meet. Now we can both work for some time 
longer, in the good faith that we work to the same 
end, & each with the allowance & love of his friend. 

I am very glad the book is out, & on its way to me. 
I should have soon seen it for the satisfaction of my 
own curiosity. Its elder brother ' I liked very much. 
It has the philosophical point of view to which all men 
must come, & it reverences man on every page. I 
thought it the very bridge which men want to carry 
them with whole feet from the popular theology to 
the philosopher's closet. And I doubt not a benefit ac- 
crues to society from so good a book more than you 
can know. That it gives some offence is a good sign. 

If you do not come here, how shall I show you 
Carlyle's letters ? If I knew any trustiest hand of man 
going straight to your door, I think I should send you 
a bundle to read. How do you like John Sterling's 
poem *The Sexton's Daughter' in Blackwood for 
July ? Do you read Tennyson ? a beautiful half of a 
poet. There is a young man at Cambridge, a Tutor, 

^ Remarks on The Four Gospels. By W. H. Fumess, Philadel- 
phia, 1836. 



C 8 ;] 

Jones Very, who has written a noble paper ( MS) on 

Shakspeare, which I have just been reading. Yet I am 

distressed to hear that he is feared to be insane. His 

critique certainly is not. What new books or new old 

ones ? I have just read two with great satisfaction, 

Heeren's Egypt, & the Historical part of Goethe's 

Farbenlehre. 

When you see Samuel Bradford, give my love to 

him. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 

S. X. after whom you inquire, is said to be Theo- 
philus Parsons. 



IV 



Concord, 13 April, 1840. 

My dear friend, 

Your kind letter with Samuel Bradford's ap- 
pendix was forwarded to me by my brother from 
New York last week and should have had an earlier 
acknowledgment. I was very happy to receive it, 
though it came to me too late to profit by, as I was 
already for some days quietly at home again. But 
your handwriting has always to me the friendliest 
Parnassian look — how much more grateful when it 
conveys your old affection & the added good will of 
your friend, Mrs. Morrison. But I fancy myself now 
to be seated in good earnest to set in some order my 
accumulating manuscripts to burn some to blot revise 
enlarge redact others & see if I cannot get by such 
exhaustive process the value of the mass. I tried the 
same work last summer for a time, but did not get 
far. Perhaps, by resolution, & the favor of the Muse, 
& refusing all invitations to Philadelphia, I may get, 
by the autumn to the extent of a volume of Essays, 
perhaps two. 

There seem to me so few ready to speak what 



C 10 ] 

multitudes are plainly waiting to hear, & wondering 
that they do not hear, that I feel at times a certain 
urgency to write some deliberate words on the great 
questions which we all silently revolve. Wherever I 
go I meet many persons who if you will address them 
as human beings and not as camp-followers or appen- 
dages to this Grand Caravan of Society will eagerly 
own the salute as an honor & a great obligation. Then 
I think I will never speak another syllable supposing 
this wearisome mountainous folly of the Church & 
the State, but will abolish them from my thought 
& begin the world anew with every word and speak 
as a rational man to a rational man. But such resolu- 
tions are hard to keep. Yet I do not quite despair. — I 
would gladly have gone to Phila. on some accounts. 
It is high time that you & I should meet & compare 
notes & bring up our accounts of thought & experi- 
ence now of long standing to the present time. I was 
greatly disappointed at not seeing you in Boston 
when you were last there, & never knew what pre- 
vented the meeting on which I so much depended. 
Do not baulk me again when you come northward. 

You ask of the Carlyle books. He has received thus 
far in money only the profits of the French Revolution 
from us, say $740.00 and is yet to receive on that 
acct. a small balance say $40.00 more, for to this day 
our accounts in this country for that book are not quite 



i: 11 n 

settled. He has besides received from us 260 copies 
of the Four Vols, of the Miscellanies costing us some- 
thingmore than $ 1 000.00 but worth to him, we hope, 
more than twice that sum as they sell the book in Lon- 
don at more than double our price. This outfit went 
as the profits of the Vols. 1 & 2 of the Miscellanies: 
Our Vols. 3 & 4 is still in great part unsold & on that 
score Carlyle ps] in debt to us for almost the whole 
expense of the edition. Then we have published a sec- 
ond edition of 500 copies of the Vols. 1 & 2, which 
brings him in debt still more & lastly he sent out in 
the winter 500 copies of his London Edit " Fr. Rev." 
of which the duties at our Custom House were con- 
siderable whilst our bookseller yet for two months 
speaks no word of returns. In this way Carlyle is at 
this moment on our debit side for a considerable sum, 
but in a way of paying us & reaping a good reward 
himself. He is assured of a profit of $1000. from the 
two first vols, of Miscellanies ; of about the same from 
the Vols 3 & 4 if the whole shall be sold, & $500. 
from his London Edit, of the History when that is gone 
in Boston. I wish I could tell you a better story — and 
this is only based on the bookseller's statement in Jan- 
uary, & he is now preparing a new face for April. I 
have just put <' Chartism " to press, and do depend on 
sending you a copy of the same in a week or two ; so 
do not buy an English copy. 



C ^2 ] 

I wrote Jine on the other page in order to leave 
room on this to write a note to Saml Bradford but 
there is none. So do you give him my loving thanks 
for his kind invitation and say that it would give me 
great satisfaction to see him in his home — so would it 
to see him in mine. I acknowledge also Mrs Morri- 
son's kindness. Tell her that Mr Alcott is here in 
Concord renting a Cottage & acre of land on which 
he stoutly intends to raise his own bread this summer 
by the help of God & his own spade. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 



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Phila: April 27, '40. 

My dear friend, 

I was sorry to give up the hope of seeing you, 
but yr very welcome letter is some compensation, & 
I cannot find it hard to excuse you for denying us 
your bodily presence when you are making prepara- 
tion to come nigh to all men with your thoughts. Pray 
let this summer be more successful than the last & 
produce two good vols, of Essays. I long to tell you, 
but I cannot, how much you move me, & how my 
spirit is stirred within me at the frivolous criticisms I 
hear & see passed upon your sayings. I ought not to 
wonder as I do that they are not noticed by you or 
some of us your friends. They do not deserve notice, 
& yet the answer is so ready that one can hardly 
resist the temptation to speak. Can it be that the 
Apocrypha is so little read that the world is ignorant 
whence your Storax, so offensive to some nostrils, 
came? Yr refusal to administer the Lord's Supper 
years ago, & your late omission of public prayer are 
both spoken of with an irrecognition of the existence 
of Quakers which is too ridiculous. — Everyday I live 



C 14 ] 

I am more & more impressed with the philosophical 
correctness of the phraseology of the New Test., 
especially those expressions <it is given' Mt is not 
given.' People understand much or little as God wills, 
& they need grace more than brains. You say things 
which I do not take ; but then I rest assured that they 
have a meaning & that, when, through a kind provi- 
dence, I come to understand it, I shall confess that it 
is true & that it could not be better expressed. As I 
am rambling on now under an impulse, I must say 
one word more about that Storax. It is a mere matter 
of taste at the worst (or best, which is it?) and be- 
tween our wise men & the author of Eccl. It brings 
up a College reminiscence. Brazer, who, as you re- 
member was our Latin tutor gave us once a passage 
from Millot's Elements to turn into Latin. My class- 
mate Person was the only one among us who recol- 
lected that the very passage (Alexander at the tent 
of Achilles ) was to be found in one of Cicero's Ora- 
tions, already done to hand. He forbore however to 
transcribe Cicero & contented himself with stealing 
only one word praeco if I remember aright. Now 
it chanced that our tutor, while he commended Per- 
son's translation, took exception to this one word as 
improper. His pupil quietly appealed to the Roman 
orator & the tutor got out of the scrape with the 
remark, "Oh! it is a mere matter of taste." Just 



C 15 ] 

think of it ! A college tutor discussing such a point 
with M. T.C.! 

In your desire or rather your determination to 
throw off this mighty mass of prescription, whose 
crushing weight, like that of the atmosphere, is un- 
felt only by those who are themselves full of common 
air, who does not, more or less deeply, sympathise? 
O for George Fox's suit of leather! And yet why 
abolish from your mind, what the mind by its magic 
may alter & reform ? It was wise advice which you 
gave the Divinity School, not to overthrow but re- 
vivify existing institutions. Pray did you reck your 
own rede (I ask for information) when you ceased 
from the Communion Service? The commemora- 
tion of the great — of the greatest seems to my ap- 
prehension founded immutably in nature. As a public 
benefactor, as the Guide & Deliverer of the world 
he is commemorated by numberless public institu- 
tions inscribed with his name & testifying to his in- 
fluence. But may he not be commemorated as a 
personal friend? Are we not moved to commune 
with his memory, as the memory of one for whom 
we may cherish the deepest personal reverence ? You 
gratified me by the good opinion you expressed of 
that humble labour of mine to elucidate the Gospels. 
It was & still is a pet & hobby. But I do not know 
whether you accord with me in my love of those won- 



I 16 ] 

drous & enlightening facts of the life of Christ. To 
me they reveal much, much that is called speculation. 
If nothing but speculation, still it is not without inter- 
est. I learn, for instance, or think I do, something of 
this sort from the resurrection of Christ, — that a 
man who dies with a great idea or purpose at heart, 
is, by that idea, raised again. That it is which wakens 
him again, & by which he recollects himself & the 
future is joined to the past. Men who die with no 
living thought, come to life again, sooner or later 
through a kind providence, but when they come to 
themselves, seeing that they have no living self. 
Heaven only knows. They have nothing to remem- 
ber themselves by. Why should not the works of 
Jesus be introduced within the circle of natural facts, 
instead of being excluded as anomalies ? Do they not 
help us as no other facts do to enlarge our view of 
Nature ? Do they not bear witness to spiritual forces ? 
— But I will interrupt you no longer. Take this as 
a passing chat, and if you are moved to write me a 
line now and then, quench not the spirit. Goodbye — 
friendly remembrances to all. 

Yr friend 

W. H. FURNESS. 

How we sneered & cavilled at a theme proposed 
to us once in college by S. Oilman " Greatness the 



C 17 ] 

wise man's fetter." Methinks you must know how to 
treat it, seeing that you are called to bear a pretty 
large burthen of that street talk & reviewing which 
the world calls fame. 



VI 



Concord, ll March, 1843. 

My dear Furness, 

I grieve to write on this sheet the number of 
the day of the month, which, as I remember, was the 
latest day allowed in the liberty of contribution to 
Mr. Carey's " Gift," and yet not to send you the Con- 
tribution. When I left you, I confided in being lodged 
safely in my library some weeks earlier, and now I 
am just arrived at home, and New York has given 
me no space in which my little Parnassus could rear 
its leisurely head. 

Now I have come to my broad accumulations of 
written paper, and will venture to promise to send you 
a few pages of prose or verse as soon as the 20th in- 
stant if Mr. Carey's volume is not complete. If it 
should be, I shall yet get something detached & in 
some sort finished, which, I will hope, shall answer 
somebody's purpose and shall at least testify my good 
will to a work which interests you, & my pleasant 
remembrance of your friend's beautiful chambers. 

I did not find in Channings' MS. at New York such 
a copy of verses as I wished to send you ; but I have 



C 19 ] 

found the poet himself here at my house, & he says 
he will send me some good verses, if he can, in a few 
days. I go to Boston on Monday where I have not yet 
been, & thence shall go to you the last of the Dials, 
for the book draws nigh to its end, as I think. With 
affectionate recollections and joyful respect, I am 

Your old friend 

Waldo Emerson 



VII 

Concord, 19 March, 1843. 

My dear friend. 

After some rather violent endeavors to pro- 
duce you a Poem, this modest piece of old prose has 
been extorted from a pile of yellowing paper : and if it 
is not adapted to Mr. Carey's purposes, he may burn 
it without a second thought. But I send with it two or 
three of Wm. EUery Channing's little poems, some 
one of which I should be heartily glad to know suited 
Mr. Carey's design. Unhappily they are not his best 
pieces, but the best have either been printed already 
in the Dial, or because of their place in a little volume 
which we are going to print of his poetry, were not 
available. But as Channing is poor, & especially poor 
in what is called success, I shall be glad if he can have 
the comfort of a place in your friend's fine book. He 
is a man of real genius though with great inequalities. 
If these pieces are accepted and any remuneration is 
proposed, which, I understood you, was offered, will 
you let the prose & the verse be considered as one 
contribution, & the fee forwarded to Mr. Channing 
without notice to him of any other. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 



L 21 ] 

I believe you must let me know, in case you do 
not print all the verses, which you select, and those 
shall be withdrawn from the volume we print. Pos- 
sibly Channing may send you new poetry, for I ha-ve 
waited in vain for it for this pacquet. 



VIII 



Phila. April 20, 43. 

My dear friend, 

/ also rejoiced in heart to find that you consid- 
ered Mr. Carey's fee generous. He is a princely fel- 
low & submits silently to most exorbitant demands 
on the part of the contributors to the Gift, & is espe- 
cially content when the price wh. he sets satisfies. I 
doubt whether any book made in these days is more 
purely the offspring of a love of Art than the Gift. 

Mr. C. returned me 'The Warning' & *An Arab- 
ian Song.' The other pieces he kept, * Soldiers Graves ' 
'Restlessness ' * The Italian Painter's Song,' & an- 
other piece, I forget. — 

I translated one of Zschocke's stories the other 
day, partly as an exercise in German. It is * Leaves 
from the Journal of a poor Vicar in Wiltshire ' & pro- 
fesses to be translated from the English of Goldsmith. 
It is to be sure the Vicar of Wakefield in different 
circumstances, but if it is an original English story, 
I don't understand how it has been let die in our 
mother tongue. I gave it to Mr. Carey to read, & he 
cried over it, & proposes to put it into the Gift, even 



[ 23 3 

if it should turn out English revived. So I shall be 
happy to appear a joint contributor with you & other 
worthies of the Gift. 

I read yr * Europe & European books,' with satis- 
faction & was pleased to recognise it. What think you 
of that young man Whipple, who, I hear is in an Ex- 
change OflBce in Boston, & who wrote that notice of 
Macaulay in the Boston Miscellany ? Is n't he prom- 
ising ? 

With a thousand good wishes 

heartily yrs, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



IX 

Concord 12 Feb^ 1844 
My dear friend, 

I am very sorry that you should have to ask 
twice for anything which it seems so easy that I 
should supply. But I have just looked through in 
memory all my known repositories of prose & nu- 
merous verses, to uncover something that should be 
fit for Mr. Carey's elegant book, but without a clear 
& satisfactory result. 

Here, however, are some verses from my friend 
Channing, — new virgin poems. If you like his poetry 
only half as well as I do, you will think me honour- 
ably represented by such a proxy, but I do not mean 
to decline a personal appearance in such good com- 
pany, & so challenged ; and if you will give me as long 
a day as last year, namely, to 1 5 March, ( I think it 
was ) , I will send you some prose or verse, the best I 
can by that day. The bargain shall be the same as last 
year, that whatever fee Mr. Carey judges suitable 
to Channing's and mine united, shall be forwarded to 
Channing, as the price of his alone. I long to see you 
in New England, and am 

Your affectionate old friend, 

R. W. Emerson. 

Yes, print anything from the Dial you will. 



X 

Phila : Feb. 15, 1844. 

My dear friend. 

You are caught beyond the possibility of escape — 
Mr. Carey adopts Timothy Dexter's ' method. No 
warming pans, however well they may serve for mo- 
lasses ladles, shall a soul have, unless a pair of skates 
be taken in the bargain. Mr. Channing's verses de- 
pend for admission into the Gift & for the conse- 
quent pay, upon an article, prose or poetry, from you. 
Take your own time (the 1 5 th of March ) but do pray 
be inspired & sing us a song. Pray don't think I would 
wheedle you out of a contribution, for I am bursting 
to tell you that though we have many that are called 
poets, — the politeness of the world is great, — yet 
you are my American Poet. In this opinion I only 

^ An eccentric character, half knave and half fool, who amassed a 
large fortune after the close of the Revolutionary War, — an incar- 
nation of Midas, whatever he touched turned to gold. As a practical 
joke, it is said, he was induced to send to Jamaica a solid cargo of 
warming pans and skates. It turned out that the warming pans could 
be converted into most convenient and expeditious skimmers for the 
vats of boiling sugar, and became at once in extraordinary demand at 
a large profit, but no one was permitted to purchase one unless with it 
he also bought a pair of skates. The venture proved to be extremely 
profitable. — Ed. 



C 26 -2 

return to my first love — to the time when the Con- 
stitution frigate found her Homer in Mr. Webb's 
writing school. How I wish I could repay you in kind 
your kindling influence, but I can give you nothing 
but my most affectionate homage. I have tried hard 
to like Channing's poetry half as well as you do. In 
this piece which you send me occurs aline about which 
I have got sadly perplexed or it is all wrong. 

" Hopeless to see no future joy, no more '* 

How is this ? Do tell me. Hopeless of seeing any 
future joy — is that the meaning? And if it is, where 's 
the English ? And how is it with the 'no more ' ? Again 

"For by the cottage fire most happy hours, 
After the day's stern toil, dear evening come " 

What is to be done with the * dear evening ? ' After 
all I recognise a poetic vein in Channing. He is plainly 
distinguishable from the herd of imitators & me- 
chanics. There [^are^ 4 or 5 lines of his, entitled 
"Soldiers Graves" in the last Gift I like & partly 
stopped a friend's mouth with them when she was 
ridiculing your poet. Have you seen any of Anna 
Lynch's lines? You will find some verses of hers 
"The Ideal " in a late number of the Democratic Re- 
view. She is a very interesting person & very musical 
in her verses. I hope to induce Mr. Carey to put into 



C 27 ] 

the Gift a Journal of hers some 5 & 20 pages which 
I admire greatly — I have undertaken to edit an An- 
nual for Mr. C. but I wish to be very anonymous, so 
please don't tell. I shall make it up with things old & 
new — Miss Osgood promises me some translations. 
If any fine old things occur to you, let me know, do. 
I find in the matter of jokes that many of Joe Miller's 
are new to this generation which knows not Joseph. 
It is the same, I take it, with poetry — I find in an old 
commonplace book George Herbert's lines "Sweet 
Rose, whose hue angry & brave " in your handwrit- 
ing — I shall put these in. I shall not go to the Dial; 
for the lines, which I had in my mind, Mr. Griswold 
tells me, he has published in some book of 5 or 6000 
copies so spoilt them for my purposes. — Here are 
some verses which Miss Osgood & I concocted to- 
gether, translated from the German — It is only once 
in an age that I attempt a rhyme. If they please your 
ear, please me by letting me know it, & throw them 
into the fire. They are to go into next year's Gift & 
are no longer mine — They are very literal 

TO COLUMBUS DYING. 

Soon with thee will all be over, 
Soon the voyage will be begun, 
That shall bear thee to discover 
Far away a land unknown. 



C 28 1 

Land, that each alone must visit 
But no tidings bring to men, 
For no sailor, once departed 
Ever hath return'd again. 

No carv'd wood, no broken branches 
Come drifting o'er the billows wild. 
He, who on that ocean launches, 
Meets no corse of angel-child. 

All is mystery before thee. 

But in peace & love & faith 

And with hope attended, sails't thou 

Off upon the ship of Death. 

Undismayed, my noble sailor, 
Spread then, spread thy canvas wide, 
Spirit ! on a sea of Ether 
Soon shalt thou serenely ride. 

Where the deeps no plummet soundeth, 
Fear no hidden breakers there. 
And the fanning wings of angels 
Shall thy bark right onward bear. 

Quit now, full of heart &. comfort. 
These Azores — they are of Earth, 
Where the rosy clouds are parting 
There the blessed Isles loom forth 



[ 29 ] 

Seest thou now thy San Salvador ? 
Him, thy Saviour, thou shalt hail 
When no storms of Earth shall reach thee 
Where thy hope shall no more fail. 

There! Isn't it pretty? Remember the nth of 

March. 

Ever yours 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XI 



Concord 1 2 March 1 844 

My dear friend. 

It is really very droll that I who am only an 
amateur poet should be preferred in your councils 
as sponsor and godfather of one who is interiorly & 
legitimately a poet. Channing has the true fire 
dimmed by some obvious defects in his intellectual 
character; the soul & the temperament of a Poet, 
though these do not extend utterly to the uttermost 
papillae of the fingers' end, so as to give quite that 
precision & finish which the art demands. And in re- 
spect to me I can easily understand how the abound- 
ing love in the old schoolmate's heart exalts the long 
accustomed jingler with a talent for veneers & var- 
nish into a true bard. Well, I must make much of 
the lovers of my verse, as they are few, & I think 
may be fewer, and so have strained a point to Send 
you what you ask for. May you not regret your 
rashness ! 

I send you a rude dirge which was composed or 
rather hummed by me one afternoon, years ago, as I 
walked in the woods & on the narrow plain through 



1 31 n 

which our Concord River flows, not far from my 
grandfather's house, and remembered my brothers 
Edward & Charles, to whom as to me this place was 
in boyhood & youth all *'the Country" which we 
knew. At the time of this walk, I was thirtyfive years 
old, and the verses began in a different metre, — 

I reached the middle of the mount 
Up which the incarnate soul must climb, 
And paused for them & looked around 
With me who walked through space & time. 

So it went on for a verse or two more, then the metre 
changed into that which I send you, & a critical ear 
will easily find varieties in that. 

My sister Elizabeth Hoar, who first persuaded me 
to print some rhymes, is fondof these verses, so I draw 
them out of their sad recess for you. Their cadence 
was so agreeable to me that I should have printed them 
in the Dial perhaps, but for their personality. 

I think to insert also a little piece called the * Poet's 
Apology,' lest this poem should look too sombre. 

In regard to the obnoxious lines in Channing's poem, 
he has furnished me with a variation for each. 

1 st for [Rafter the day's stern toil, dear evening 
come] 
read [^When silent frost has shut in house & 
field.] 



C 32 ] 

2nd /or [^Hopeless to see no future joy, no moreJ^ 

read [^Patient yet heartsick, waiting for the 

tomb.] 

Thanks for the brave hymn to Columbus, the San 

Salvador rings nobly in my ear. Continue to be the 

friend of 

Your friend. 

Waldo E. 

I cannot decide whether to omit the fourth stanza 
in the '< Poet's Apology" : if you use it you may omit 
or keep that verse at pleasure. I find a spare copy of 
Channing in the house & am resolved to leave you 
without excuse for your blindness to the best Ameri- 
can poet, so it shall go herewith. 



XII 



Concord, April 4, 1844. 

My dear friend, 

Your letter & its order for twentyfive dollars 
of coined money arrived safely three days ago to the 
wonder & satisfaction of all parties. I heartily hope 
Mr. Carey may not have occasion to rue his liberal 
dealing with us & others. But you must win him to 
the best opinion he can entertain of EUery's Poems 
and I trust he will pubhsh at least one of them, as his 
name will accredit the " Gift" to some good North- 
erners. I have just done with the Dial. Its last number 
is printed ; & having lived four years, which is a Pres- 
idential term in America, it may respectably end. I 
have continued it for some time against my own judg- 
ment to please other people, and though it has now 
some standing & increasing favour in England, it 
makes a very slow gain at home, and it is for home that 
it is designed. It is time that each of the principal con- 
tributors to it, should write in their own names, and go 
to their proper readers. In New England its whole 
quadrennium will be a pretty historiette in literary 
annals. I have been impatient to dismiss it as I am a 



C 34 ] 

very //?zable editor, and only lose good time in my 
choosing ^ refusing ^ patching, that I want for more 
grateful work. Now I shall get my new book ready 
without delay. I have heard of a professor who when 
the joys of life were enumerated in a thoughtful 
company, told them they had omitted the writing of 
a Hebrew Grammar, I dream of glad weeks to come 
in putting together what belong together of papers 
old & new. 

I received last week a sermon from you that 
breathed a generous air, and now this simple friendly 
German hymn, gifts of good omen both : and I am 
glad that so many Muses sacred & more sacred con- 
tend for you : unless it is better that one Muse should 
monopolize you wholly : then it will so be. I wish you 
had told me how it sped with that stately boy of yours 
in his foreign journey ? ' And how with his sweet sis- 
ter at home r Argument for a new letter which you 
will have to write to 

Your friend 

Waldo E. 

^ Tliis refers to ^^'. H. F.'s eldest son William ; ' his sweet sister ' 
was afterward INIrs. Caspar ^^'iste^. — Ed, 



XIII 

Concord, 7 February, 1845 

My dear friend, 

I will do something, so help me the Muses ! 
for the Diadem ; but a more invita Minerva than that 
of my experience is not between the Delaware & the 
Merrimac rivers. However I have been spirited up 
lately from several sides to collect my verses, and in 
all the medley or motley, something may turn up that 
I can send. I have written to Carlyle by the Cambria, 
reciting to him Mr. Carey's good intentions, & my 
concurrence with the same, and that Mr. Carey comes 
to us like a Deus ex machinay to save us in these last 
days from all pirates. I told him of the design of the 
picture, and urged his compliance with the request to 
sit. I have not heard from him for two months. — 

I have not sent any advertisement such as was 
agreed, to signify Carlyle's approbation of the new 
edition, as I suppose you may not want it yet. But I 
will not be wanting in my part to so good a design. 
Ever yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo Emerson. 



XIV 

Phila., March 31, 45'. 

My dear friend, 

I thank you for Carlyle's letter & for the op- 
portunity you give me to say that I am beginning to 
think of the Diadem, & shall be glad to receive any 
jewels you have to send. But after all, don't be an- 
noyed. If your pigeon holes furnish nothing in prose 
or rhyme — if your Minerva is unwilling, do not so 
sin against your philosophy as to try to write out of 
mere friendship, & yet the Muses by whom you 
swore to help me, obey Fate, & Necessity has an urn 
of inspiration. The best things I ever did, that is, the 
things that I have been most interested in doing, were 
crushed out of me by my professional necessities & 
my experience bids me kiss the rod under which I so 
often writhe. What do you find worth listening to ? I 
am one with Carlyle when he says that the Concord 
voice alone instructs him. Please tell him by the way 
that my friend Carey deserves all his good thoughts 
of him, & that the £ so was the offer of the man not 
the tradesman. 

With hearty salutations, 

Yr friend, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



L 37 3 

Since writing the foregoing, I have seen the water- 
colour copy of Lawrence's Carlyle — It is capital. I '11 
be sworn it 's an excellent likeness. Sartain (who is a 
London boy ) will do his best in engraving it, & Carlyle 
shall be satisfied. 

The Miscellanies are printing, & Mr. Carey will be 
glad to have your " Advertisement " whenever you 
please. Mr. Carey would like also to have the * Crom- 
well ' & publish it, when it comes. Mr. Carey would 
like also to keep this letter of Carlyle's. Can you part 
with it ? or send another ? 



XV 

Concord, 8 April, 1845. 
My dear friend, 

I send you a letter to Messieurs Carey & Lea, 
which I suppose will serve the purpose of an Adver- 
tisement, if it be printed to follow the title-page in 
their edition of Carlyle. As to the request of Mr. 
Carey to retain Carlyle' s letter, I am not quite ready 
to grant it, as I do not carry accurately in my memory 
its contents. If Mr. C. only wants a specimen of his 
writing to lithograph or otherwise copy for publica- 
tion, he is at liberty to use all that part of the letter 
which respects this edition. But I should not like to 
have the whole letter published — as well as I can 
remember its contents, & perhaps can find a letter of 
mere business. If Mr. Carey however only wants an 
autograph for his private satisfaction, I think I will 
leave him in quiet possession of this, at least for the 
present, if he will have it transcribed & send me a 
copy of it. For I cannot bear to be wanting to so good 
a friend of Carlyle, as he appears to be. 

For the Diadem, I am in good hope to find or make 
something yet that will not be wholly unworthy, but 
it cannot be ready today. 

Ever yours, 

R. W. E. 



XVI 

Concord, 9 May, 1845. 

My dear friend, 

I send you two or three little pieces, garnets 
for your " Diadem," — if not too late. But I think you 
gave me into May in your first communication on the 
subject, for latest day. My wife & my mother have 
become a little uneasy at the long detention of my 
miniature effigy which your compatriot Mr. Griswold 

4ft 

borrowed of the former, and insist that I shall inquire 
if it is safe, or has at some time been returned in our 
direction & has miscarried. Will you, if you meet Mr. 
G., say so much to him. I dare say it is quite safe & 
will come back in good time. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. E. 



XVII 

» 

Concord 2 June 
Monday MornS [l845] 
My dear friend. 

My note to Mr. Carey was shockingly care- 
less, and the insertion of the * of,' a prank of the imps. 
I find in my drawer a draft of the note without that 
superfluity. If the new note, which I enclose, does 
not end as well as the old one, print from the old one. 
Also the address was a carelessness : I knew better, & 
never have confounded the person of the benevolent 
gentleman who took so much pains that I should see 
his pictures in good lights, — with any other, though 
I knew nothing of the history of his partners. 

As for the head, which, with your letter, only 
reached me on Sat. night, (for Munroe kept it, & I 
have not been in town for weeks, ) I like the head very 
well, and though I dare not confide in my memory 
of a face which I saw for one day twelve years ago, 
yet this agrees well with my impressions. I go to town 
today & I think I must take the head with me, & try to 
find some one who has seen C. recently, Dr. Russell, 
or Parker or Mrs. Lee. I could heartily wish he had 
not been drawn with the left arm so placed ; or is it 
ill-drawn, or a little prolonged ? I think it a strong 
likeness : but Carlyle ought not to be as contented 



L 41 3 

with it as he seems to be in his letter, for it certainly 
does not give the ideal of the grim literary sanscu- 
lotte, though this is far better than D'Orsay's. Some- 
body will yet draw a more characteristic sketch. As 
an engraving, it seems to me excellent, & the best of 
Mr Sartain's that I have seen. It is almost painted. 
And so clear & strong, & without that pomp of dark- 
ness. — 

I have not yet recovered mycopy of "Dr. Francia." 
If I do, & I have sent for it, I will send it you though 
I cannot think Mr. Carey can find any difficulty in 
finding it in some library which binds & keeps the 
Quarterly Reviews. It was in the Westminster, was 
it not? — 

I may have an errand for Dr. Hering; but if I have 
not, I shall not write a letter. 

For I have grown churlish about introductions, & 
Enghshman-like never introduce until I have been 
introduced. But it is a great refreshment that you are 
ever so kind & indulgent to me. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 

Let Mr. Carey keep the letter with all my heart 
but he shall send me a copy. The ladies say they are 
not content with Mr. Griswold's answer. They will 
have the picture. What to say to the ladies ? 



XVIII 



Phila. Oct. 8, '45. 

My dear friend, 

I shall send some things to you today or to- 
morrow to the care of J. Munroe & Co. Mr. Hart 
requests yr acceptance of the watercolour copy of 
Carlyle's portrait from which the engraving was 
made. The plates of the Diadem are miserably 
printed — in mezzotint a great deal depends on the 
printing — & I am disappointed. Nevertheless I shall 
be glad to hear what you think of Leutze's title 
page. I anticipate the greatest things of L. We have 
his last picture here * The Landing of the Northmen ' 
full of poetry. — I spoke to Mr. Hart about the £50 
for Carlyle. He thinks C. must have received it & 
would like to know. 

I had a letter the other day from a noble lady-cor- 
respondent of mine from New Zealand who speaks 
with enthusiasm of the 7 leaves of your Essays which 
a friend had sent her in a letter. I sympathise in Charles 
Lamb's skepticism (you see I have eaten C. Lamb) 
about sending letters so far. But there's a triumph in 
boring through to the Antipodes, and a romance in 



[ 43 ] 

getting a letter written in a cave hollowed out of a 
mountain & in hearing of the breakers roaring four 
miles off & all this on the other side of the world. I 
want to hear what you have to say about the Diadem 
— Are not Hedge's translations all but perfect ? The 
Bean was translated by W. H. F. Jr., and the Rose 
by a fine girl of the Norwich Taylor stock. When is 
that volume of your poems coming? Won't you pub- 
lish it here in Phila ? 

Affectionately, 
Yrs. 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XIX 



Concord, Oct. 15, 1845. 

My dear friend, 

I should have answered your letter so richly 
accompanied too, immediately but that I saw that the 
best answer to a part of it would be to send you 
the last letter which I had from Carlyle, and which I 
had lent to a friend here who must & will read his let- 
ters. I enclose it that you may not only read its good 
news of himself, but see his answer to my remark ( in 
a letter written before I saw you in Boston) that I 
had heard nothing from Philadelphia respecting the 
promised ^^50, since the death of Mr. Carey, and 
that I hesitated about writing to you on the subject. 
You will see by his letter that he has not received the 
money. Pray do not afflict Mr. Sartain with C.'s grim 
humours, into which he is always relapsing, — about 
the picture. 

Thanks, and very humble thanks too, for the fine 
book you send me, so rich & stately that my poor 
little verses look very few & short, — and I wish 
they had been better. Great is your art & skill. 

I enclose also a note of thanks, (which read) to 



C 45 ] 

Mr. Hart, for his generous gift. I doubt not also that 
my first thanks are due to you in the matter. And as 
far back as I can remember in Hfe you ever stand in 
the shape of a benefactor to me. I shall write a hymn 
to you one day. 

You must send me back this letter of T. C. ; and 
also remind some right person, friend of Mr. Carey, 
that the copy of the letter I gave him was never sent 
to me. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo E. 



XX 

Concord, Feb^, 25, 1846 

My dear Furness, 

To pass over my gross omissions of epistolary 
duty to you ward, dum tacent clamant, — & come 
immediately to the errand of today — be it known to 
you; that Carlyle had been repeatedly charged by me 
to send his Cromwell book over to us in MS. which 
Munroe & Co. were ready to print advantageously 
for him. At the last, he was driven a good deal, & the 
printers there would not let him wait for a MS. copy ; 
so he apologized to us & did the best he could ; sent 
me a letter, saying, " I have sent you by last steamer 
an early copy of the whole work, which you will get, 
at least a month before any bookseller in America 
can have it " &c. sent thro Wiley & Putnam. I had not 
received any such parcel by that last steamer. I sent 
Horace Greeley Esq. to demand such copy of Wiley 
& P. They " declined giving it up, until their edition, 
then in press, should be ready ; & had their authority 
from Carlyle's publishers, of whom they had bought 
a copy." So we were baulked, & angry, without sin. 
I sent Carlyle an account of this matter. He went 
down to his " Chapman & Hall " there, & got an 
explanation, which was provoking enough truly, but 



C 47 ] 

exculpated Wiley & Putnam. It seems, he had gone 
into their shop, & written my name on a blank leaf, 
& ordered an early copy bound up & forwarded to me 
by the going steamer. Chapman said, "If it is to be 
reprinted by Mr. E., why bind it ? send it in sheets." 
Carlyle, they say, made reply, " O I will not bother 
him with that ; bind it." 

He did not wish to send it me in a form that seemed 
to expect us to reprint. But Chapman bethought him- 
self — & went immediately over to W. & Putnam, 
& offered them an early copy for ^lo. They said, 
*'But you must send no other." He said, **Only one 
for Mr. E., who will not print, Mr. C. says." " Yes, 
but he may give it to one who will — " *'Then you 
need not hasten his copy — " said Chapman — 

And thus was our learned & witty friend defrauded 
by little & little of all advantage here from his most 
saleable book. He was very much vexed at the whole 
affair. 

Chapter Second. 

Now he has a second edition preparing, and be- 
thinks him that he can make possibly, out of that, some 
reparation to Munroe, who was to have shared with 
him the advantage of the first edition, and he sends us 
the letter which I conclude to enclose to you. 

I have gone to Munroe, with this letter, & said. 



What will you give for the new edition ? Is it worth 
anything to you ? Munroe & Co do not seem inclined 
to meddle with it at all, fearing that not only the Ap- 
pendix, but what new matter shall be inserted in the 
text of the book, will be instantly reprinted from them. 
It occurs to me, that the next party — (I have yet 
mentioned it to no other,) is your friend Mr. Hart. 
Perhaps he may see how the work may be printed 
once more here with some security from pirates. If 
he cannot in the existing circumstances attempt any- 
thing for the mutual advantage of Carlyle & himself, 
he is at liberty if he chooses, to receive & print the 
proofs or such part as he will. And I know Carlyle 
will be gratified to have this disposition made of them, 
as he is very sensible of the liberality of Carey & 
Hart's behaviour in their edition of his Miscellanies. 

Will you now add to all your loveliness this new 
merit of considering & properly communicating this 
affair, & sending me an early reply, as the days are 
few in which anything can be done. And send me 
home my Carlyle letters, of which now you will have 
1, 2, 3, is it not ? & I no copy. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 

All is clear in respect to Wiley & Putnam. They 
explained very circumstantially their part in the af- 



i: 49 3 

fair to me, & I wrote to them acquitting them of all 
charges, & I printed a paragraph to the same effect 
in the Boston D. Advertiser. But they were told, at 
the same time, how vexed we were to be thus hon- 
orably plundered by them. Of course, we owe them 
& their editions no respect. 



XXI 



Phila. March 2, '46 

My dear Friend, 

Mr. Hart says that if, under the circumstances, 
there were any inducement to take the 2d Edition of 
Cromwell he would print it & share with Mr. Carlyle 
or pay him a certain sum, but it would be folly to touch 
it, as W. & P. have themselves been pirated upon & 
compelled to print the book in the cheapest possible 
form. Mr. H. advises that the book be surrendered at 
once & entirely to W. & P. & this you may do, he 
thinks, in such a manner as to awaken their honour & 
induce them to acknowledge the author's rights to 
some small share at least of the profits. Mr. Carlyle, 
so Mr. H. thinks, should hereafter reserve to himself 
the American Market, & then he might make satisfac- 
tory arrangements with some American publisher. — 
I have yr Carlyle letters all safe and will send them 
on some day. It always delights me to see your hand- 
writing, & I should have rejoiced to see your face some 
few days ago when I hovered over Boston, hardly 
alighting anywhere. I havejust conducted the funeral 
of a fine old woman here, some eighty years old, whom 



C 51 ] 

I mention to you, because she verified an expression 
of yrs. She was a dear lover of Carlyle & all good 
men & things, a sharer in the terrors of the French 
Revolution, when her husband had Danton etc. as 
pupils in English. She could not however read much 
of Carlyle at once, as it destroyed sleep, so she said. 
Let me serve you or Carlyle if I may. It is always 
pleasant, — but take heed how you write business let- 
ters to me, as I must always give you a little gossip in 
return. I have had unusual delight in Cromwell — had 
not meant to read it yet, but Providence put it in my 
hands & I read it at a heat. I have a dim idea of the 
labour, but he, Carlyle, has washed the materials so 
clean that they look as good as new. 

Heartily yrs. 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XXII 

Phila. March 20 1846 
Dear Emerson, 

Here am I begging again — I am thinking of 
the Diadem for '47 — I don't wish to get anything 
from you out of that volume of poems of which I have 
heard for some time past that it was forthcoming. 
Haven't you got some little bit or bits of Prose, some 
scraps or shavings which you can make nothing else 
out of & which will suit my purpose ? You speak some- 
times as if you were obliged to me. Pray don't have 
such thoughts, but give from your own large soul & 
add to my obligations. The more I read of yours, the 
more I seem to recognise your thoughts as old friends, 
tho' when or where they & I were acquainted, I can- 
not tell. I lost them I suppose in my passage from the 
other world into this. They dropt into the sea & you 
have fished them out, or you picked my pockets when 
we sate side by side at Mr. Webb's school. I only 
claim my own & will give a large reward in thanks 
for the recovery of a few to meet the present occa- 
sions. ,j , ., 

Very heartily yrs, 

W. H. FURNESS. 

I shall be particularly thankful for Verses if you 
have any to spare. 



XXIII 

Concord, 22 May, 1846. 
My dear friend, 

I have nothing to send to the new Diadem. 
I am sorry for it. But I have promised to do what I 
can to make a volume of Poems, and those which I can 
suffer to pass for pubhcation are so few, that I dare 
not diminish the number by a single quatrain or coup- 
let. Then for prose, I am like some bookdealers who 
will never sell me the thing I want, for it will break 
a set. With the most vigorous recollections, I cannot 
remember that I ever wrote anything detached & of 
reasonable dimensions. You see my desperate imbe- 
cility, & will leave me to time & my tub for recovery. 
I am trying to put into printable condition my seven 
Lectures on Representative Men ; but the topics were 
so large, & seem to require such spacious & solid read- 
ing, that what might pass to be spoken, does not 
promise to be fit to print in a hurry. 

Your abominable 

R. W. Emerson. 



XXIV 



Concord lo June 1846 

My dear friend, 

I enclose a piece, which, for want of a better 
name, I call " the World Soul." Anima Mundi was 
the name, but we are bound at least in poetry to speak 
English. I had the poem when I wrote before, but in 
the smallness of my portfolio of new pieces, dared 
not send away one of so many lines, until you tell me 
that I may print it in my new book, if I have one, in 
spite of you. Yours, however, will, I suppose, appear 
first. — I have heard that Margaret Fuller printed a 
verse or two of this piece once in the Tribune, but I 
never saw them. She printed, if she printed, from a 
copy I had lent to Elizabeth Hoar. I am almost 
tempted to send you another copy of the same piece, 
that you may select your own reading from the Vari- 
orum. But I will not bother you. I will only say, that 
in the copy from which I now transcribe this, the 8th 
stanza has only one quatrain, and I have just added 
four lines to make it complete. And now it strikes me 
that the poem was a little more intelligible before. If 
you think so, leave out the quatrain. 



C 55 ] 

My wife insists that you shall hear once more of 
Mr Griswold. He wrote me in April, I think, that 
he should be in Phila. in May, & would immediately 
send home the lady's miniature. If he is at home, jog 
his elbow for the lady's sake. 

Yours gladly 

R. W. Emerson. 



THE WORLD-SOUL. 

Thanks to the morning light ! 

Thanks to the seething [' foaming ' ed. 1884] sea, 

To the uplands of New Hampshire, 

To the greenhaired forest free ; 

Thanks to each man of courage, 

To the maids of holy mind, 

To the boy with his games undaunted, 

Who never looks behind ! 



Cities of proud hotels. 
Houses of rich & great, 
Vice nestles in your chambers, 
Beneath your roofs of slate. 
It cannot conquer folly — 
Time-&-space-conquering steam 
And the light-outspeeding telegraph 
Bears nothing on its beam. 



L 56 ] 

The politics are base, 
The letters do not cheer, 
And 'tis far in the deeps of history 
The voice that speaketh clear ; 
Trade & the streets ensnare us. 
Our bodies are weak & worn, 
We plot, & corrupt each other, 
And we despoil the unborn. 

Yet there in the parlour sits 
Some figure of noble guise, 
Our angel, in a stranger's form. 
Or woman's pleading eyes. 
Or only a flashing sunbeam 
In at the window-pane, 
Or Music pours on mortals 
Its beautiful disdain. 

The inevitable morning 
Finds them who in cellars be. 
And be sure the all-loving Nature 
Will smile in a factory. 
Yon ridge of purple landscape. 
Yon sky between the walls 
Hold all the hidden wonders 
In scanty intervals. 

Alas, the Sprite that haunts us 
Deceives our rash desire. 
It whispers of the glorious gods. 
And leaves us in the mire ; 



C 57 ] 

We cannot learn the cipher 

That 's writ upon our cell, 

Stars help [' taunt ' ib.^ us by a mystery 

Which we could never spell 

If but one hero knew it, 
The world would blush in flame, 
The sage till he hit the secret, 
Would hang his head for shame ; 
But our brothers have not read it. 
Not one has found the key, 
And henceforth we are comforted, 
We are but such as they. — 

Still, still, the secret presses, 
The nearing clouds draw down. 
The crimson morning flames into 
The fopperies of the town ; 
[Within, without the idle earth, 
Stars weave eternal rings, 
The sun himself shines heartily 
And shares the joy he brings.'] 

And what if Trade sow cities. 

Like shells along the shore, 

And thatch with towns the prairie broad 

With railways ironed o'er ; — 

They are but sailing foam-bells 

Along thought's causing stream, 

* The quatrain referred to, in preceding letter, p. 54. 



L 58 2 

And take their shape & sun-colour 
From him that sends the dream. 



For Destiny does not Uke [' never swerves'' ib."] 

To yield [' Nor yields ' ib.^ to men the helm, 

And [' He ' ib.^ shoots his thought by hidden nerves 

Throughout the solid realm ; 

The patient Daemon sits 

With roses and a shroud, 

He has his way, & deals his gifts, — 

But ours is not allowed. 



He is no churl or trifler, 

And his viceroy is none, 

Love-without- weakness, 

Of Genius, sire and son. 

And his will is not thwarted ; 

The seeds of land & sea 

Are the atoms of his body bright, 

And his behest obey. 

He serveth the servant, 
The brave he loves amain. 
He kills the cripple & the sick, 
And straight begins again ; 
For gods delight in gods. 
And thrust the weak aside. 
To him who scorns their charities, 
Their arms fly open wide. 



C 59 •} 

When the old world is sterile, 

And the ages are effete, 

He will from wrecks & sediment 

The fairer world complete. 

He forbids to despair. 

His cheeks mantle with mirth, 

And the unimagined good of men 

Is yeaning at the birth. 

Spring still makes spring in the mind 

When sixty years are told, 

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 

And we are never old. 

Over the winter glaciers 

I see the summer glow. 

And through the wild-piled snowdrift 

The warm rosebuds below. 



XXV 



Concord, 6 August, 1847. 

Dear Furness, 

It was very wrong in you not to come & see 
me in any of these your northern flights. The last of 
your Boston visits, for example, I set down as a clear 
case of contumacy, that you would neither come to me 
nor be at home where I went to see you. I hope you 
had my card, which I left at Dr. Gannett' s. But now 
I write because Henry D. Thoreau has a book to print. 
Henry D. Thoreau is a great man in Concord, a man 
of original genius & character, who knows Greek, & 
knows Indian also, — not the language quite as well as 
John Eliot — but the history monuments & genius of 
the Sachems, being a pretty good Sachem himself, 
master of all woodcraft, & an intimate associate of the 
birds, beasts, & fishes, of this region. I could tell you 
many a good story of his forest life. — He has written 
what he calls *' A week on the Concord & Merrimack 
Rivers," which is an account of an excursion made 
by himself & his brother (in a boat which he built) 
some time ago, from Concord, Mass., down the Con- 



C 61 ] 

cord river & up the Merrimack, to Concord, N. H. — 
I think it a book of wonderful merit, which is to go 
far & last long. It will remind you of Izaak Walton, 
and, if it have not all his sweetness, it is rich, as he is 
not, in profound thought. — Thoreau sent the manu- 
script lately to Duyckinck, — Wiley & Putnam's lit- 
erary Editor, who examined it, & "gave a favorable 
opinion of it to W. & P." They have however de- 
clined publishing it. And I have promised Thoreau 
that I would inquire a little in N. Y. & Philadelphia 
before we begin to set our own types. Would Mr. 
Hart, or Mr. Kay like to see such a manuscript ? It 
will make a book as big as my First Series of Essays. 
They shall have it on half profits or on any reason- 
able terms. Thoreau is mainly bent on having it print- 
ed in a cheap form for a large circulation. 

You wrote me once & asked about Hedge. I esteem 
'& respect him always more & more. He is best seen 
at Bangor. I saw him there last October & heard him 
preach all day. He is a solid person who cannot be 
spared in a whole population of levities. I think he is 
like one of those slow growing pear trees whose fruit 
is finer every year & at last becomes a Beurre Incom- 
parable. I bade him goodbye, seven or eight weeks 
ago, on board the " Washington Irving," & expect to 
see him in England next spring. Do you know that I 
am going thither in October? 



i: 62 ] 

Will not Henry Thoreau serve as well as another 
apology for writing to you. 

Yours ever, 

R. W. Emerson. 

It may easily happen that you have too many affairs 
even to ask the question of the booksellers. Then 
simply say that you do not ; for my party is Anarcharsis 
the Scythian, and as imperturbable as Osceola. 



XXVI 

Phila. Aug. 16, 1847. 

My dear friend, 

Mr. Hart is out of the city & will not return 
till the last of the week. I will do my best with him 
for your friend's book. But I am doubtful of success. 
There are other respectable publishers here to whom, 
with your good- will, I will apply. I spoke to one this 
morning by the name of Moore, who is now printing 
an edition, as he tells me, of Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy "unearthing the bones of that old great 
man." Mr. Moore expressed a desire to see the MS 
of your book. I will write you again shortly. 

Why do you go so far away? I see nothing of you 
& talk with you only through your works, & yet I 
cannot bear to have you & Hedge etc. go out of the 
country. It seems as if the best people were quitting 
the company. I wished to see you greatly, but the 
fates forbade. I could not get to Concord. I have been 
rusticating with my family in the woods among people 
who hardly know that there is such a place as Mexico, 
let alone the war, people so subdued to the quality of 
their condition, that the woods & fields " adopt them 
as their own," & they are as simple & good & loving 
as Nature herself. It is a great refreshment to us, city 



C 64 : 

manufactures; — & I have read Jean Paul's Titan for 
the first time. You told me, I recollect, that you did 
not & do not take to Richter. How is it? Is he not full 
of the purest humour? And is it not a curious fact in 
literature, in life, the twin-like resemblance between 
him & Carlyle. Carlyle is no imitator & yet he is, in 
his fancy & his fun J. Paul over again. 

Do come back soon & stay here — let us know that 
you are in these parts. One likes to have his treasures 
within reach tho' he never sees them. I am glad to 
have your opinion of Hedge — Will you take out a 
copy of his book' to him if we get it ready? Do you 
go on the i st of October ? 

I hoped to have you here in Phila. some time & Nan 
singing her old ballads to you. I am foolish about this 
daughter of mine — She is not yet 1 7 & is a full grown 
woman & an excellent German so far as the language 
is concerned & reads it like a native, & we have lots 
of pleasure together — Won't you come to see us 
after you get over this ugly voyage — business first 
& pleasure afterwards — But goodbye — I love to 
hear from you when the spirit moves you. 
With all good wishes. 

Affectionately yrs. 

W. H. FURNESS. 

' Prose Writers of Germany. By Frederic H. Hedge. Phila- 
delphia. Carey and Hart. 1847. 



XXVII 



Phila. Sept. 19, l84r. 

My dear friend. 

Coming out of Church this morning, I reed a 
word of love from you through Mrs. Morrison, & it 
quickens a small purpose I have had to write a Hne to 
you before you go across the water & assure you of 
the hearty good wishes of an old friend. May the 
blessing of Heaven go with you ! I wonder whether 
I am not prouder of you than you are of yourself. Per- 
haps if I had lived near you all this while & seen you 
often, I might not have had quite so much veneration 
for you. But now I know you only through your writ- 
ings & these show your inspired moments. I think 
of you in your high office as prophet & priest. Per- 
haps I should have made a particular effort in some 
one of my recent visits to get at you for a while but 
the impression is strong upon me that you are hunt- 
ed, run down by a host of people, who think they 
must see you. And so I have thought that I should 
best show you my love by not wasting your good 
hours or inflicting any tediousness upon you under 
the plea of old friendship. I hold myself none the less 



: 66 3 

near to you. What pleasant dreams I lose myself in 
of Mrs. Whitwell's school & Mr. Webb's desks & 
your generous appreciation of my art of Drawing & 
my admiration of your art of Poetry. The beauty, the 
boundless hopefulness of that early time — I must 
have it again. I cannot part with a faith I have that 
our friendships here are but the beginnings of better 
things, that by & by space will be taken a\vay & there 
shall be no obstacle to a full communion. Once more, 
God bless you. I shall be happy to hear of you & 
your doings in the old country. You will do great 
good I know. 

I applied to Mr Hart about your friend's book but 
he will have none of it. He is run down, he says, with 
applications to print. 

You will tell Carlyle what a presence he is here. 

Affectionately yours 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XXVIII 



Concord, 16 December, 1848. 

My dear Furness, 

I am very glad to see your faithful hand again, 
always of the best omen to me & to whomsoever it 
concerns itself for. 

But I hardly dare accept the opportunity you offer 
me of printing a chapter on Montaigne. All that I 
know, or, all that I know how to say, about him, is 
written in one of Seven Lectures, which, together, I 
call "Representative Men," & Montaigne there stands 
for the Class Skeptic. I mean some day to print these 
together, whenever I shall have more adequately fin- 
ished the resisting figures of Plato & of Swedenborg. 

I am much obliged to you for the pleasing & most 
readable tract on the Art-Union, which you sent me, 
the other day. It gave me exact & agreeable informa- 
tion. It would give me the greatest pleasure to see the 
Author of that tract. Do you think I ever shall .? 

Yours affectionately, 

Waldo E. 



XXIX 



Concord, 10 January, 1849. 

My dear Furness, 

Here is a curious coil in Carlyle's last letter, 
which I know not how to begin to unwind except by 
letting him tell his owti story, and to you, poor you, 
who were born for a benefactor to him & to me. You 
must even go through patiently with your destiny. — 
Thus runs the letter, under date < Chelsea, 6 Decem- 
ber, 1848.* 

[^Hereupon follows a long extract from a letter of 
Carlyle, wherein a history is given of a draft for £50, 
drawn by Mr. Hart on Brown, Shipley & Co., in fa- 
vour of Mr. Carlyle and cashed by Lord Ashburton, 
but by the carelessness of the latter, as it turned out, 
never entered as paid in his bankers' account. What- 
ever interest the story may have ever had has long 
ago evaporated ; it is rehearsed at full length, I be- 
lieve, in Carlyle's published Correspondence with 
Emerson. — Ed.] 

So far the Homeric Carlyle. I think you must carry 
the matter to Mr. Hart for him ; though certainly Mr. 
Baring's carelessness is inexcusable. But he is a good 



i: 69 3 

man, I saw him two or three times, & found him very 
friendly & hospitable, and he has been for many years 
a valuable friend to Carlyle. 

And so I leave my burden with you, for this pres- 
ent ; and am as ever 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo Emerson. 



XXX 



Phila. Jan. 15, '49. 

My dear Emerson, 

I called on Mr Hart this morning & he turned 
to a copy of a letter, addressed by him to you under 
date of Oct. 27, '45, authorizing Mr Carlyle to draw 
upon Brown, Shipley & Co. of Liverpool for £50. 
He then showed me, in his account with Brown, Ship- 
ley & Co., T. Carlyle's draft for ^50 payable in 
April 1846, charged to Carey & Hart, as accepted 
Dec. 2, 1846. So the state of the case may be readily 
ascertained by asking the Liverpool House about it. 
They can tell, I suppose, to whom they paid the 
money. Pray don't magnify such very small services. 
I wish I could do something great for you or Carlyle, 
pay you in kind for the infinite satisfaction I have got 
from you both. Shall I ever again have such delight 
in this world as I have had in reading you & Carlyle 
& a very few others ? My chief hobby for years past, 
you know, has been the life of Christ, in a literary 
point of view perhaps rather than religious, & my 
light has come from Carlyle for which God bless 
him ! But how little remains readable. Will there ever 



n 71 : 

again be a book in which one can lose himself? The 
great fun of life now is in growing old — the con- 
trasts, continually coming up, between Mrs. Whit- 
well's school & Mr. Webb's desks on the one hand, 
& things as they daily occur on the other. I burst 
into a ridiculous laugh the other day in the street 
when I recognised my son in a young gentleman at 
a distance, my son ! Every day brings some curious 
note of the passage of time, & I can hardly tell 
whether I have lived the past or dreamed it. . . . 

How I should love to see you and yours, but I see 
no one as I would when I go Eastward. My time 
is broken up there & you should come here. Why 
not? Come & lecture & have a room under our roof 
& be free as the wind. Sam Bradford is close by — 
good & prosperous. How vivid is my remembrance 
of your mother ! — but goodbye 

Your ancient friend 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XXXI 

Phila. Dec. 27, '49. 
My dear friend, 

I send you a couple of copies of the translation 
of the Song of the Bell, one of which, if it can be done 
without a shadow of trouble or objection, I shall be 
pleased to send Mr. Carlyle through you. A true man 
like you will have no constraint in doing just as you 
please about it. This translation possessed me for 
some four weeks, & I put it in print to be satisfied it 
was out of me, as the demoniac wished to 5^^ the devils 
depart by having them sent into the swine. The day 
I arrived in Boston last Fall upon a very brief visit, I 
found you had just gone home, & I was almost 
tempted to follow you. I revolved very seriously the 
idea of giving a day to Concord but I could not ar- 
range it. I must manage it next time. I buy your vol- 
umes as they come out, but still I always want one 
from you that "dying I may bequeath it " &c. I passed 
a pleasant night a year ago with your brother Wil- 
liam. Do you know that sweet boy of mine is set up 
as an Artist in Boston. Shall I send him to see you ? 
Are you bored as much as ever by visitors ? Heaven 
bless you ! 

Affectionately yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XXXII 

Concord 3 January 1850 
My dear friend, 

I was heartily glad to see your dear handwrit- 
ing once more, glad of all it signified, & of the fine 
little book that came with it. I am today (as too often, 
& all but always) the hack of petty engagements, & 
am besides forced to some caution in the use of my 
eyes, but must write, though so tardily, a few lines. 
Schiller's Song of the Bell, I may as well avow, I have 
always been content to take on trust; I have never 
read it in German ; I do not like it very well : have 
even fancied that it owed something of its wide cur- 
rency to its illustrations by Retsch, & to the music 
which has been added. More of my stupidity I will 
not now parade : but since you have been drawn to 
praise it with such faithful work, I shall give it one 
more chance to captivate me and have already read 
your gay translation once through, — which to me is 
only learning my way. All joy & peace & honor 
dwell with you, whatever you attempt to do ! 

I learn with great interest that your son is in Bos- 
ton. I had never heard of it : — only last summer, 
that he was in N. Y. Why did you not send him to 
me at once ? I beg you to do so now ; or send me his 
address, & I will immediately be at one*with him. 



I 74 ] 

I am going however, next week to Albany, & the 
whole of the following week am to be in the City of 
New York. Immediately thereafter, I shall be per- 
manently here, and will not be deprived of my share 
of beauty & art, do you tell him. I sent you my new 
book to the care of Mr Hart. 

Ever affectionately yours, 

Waldo Emerson. 



XXXIII 

Astor House, New York 
24 March, 1850 

My dear Furness, 

Since you are pleased to be peremptory & 
foolhardy in your good nature, I think I must even try 
your project. I must hold you to your own terms, & it 
is the bookseller & not you who shall shoulder the af- 
fair, even though the audience should so be reduced 
one half. I do not think I can come to Philadelphia 
until Tuesday or Wednesday, — for safety, Wednes- 
day, — of next week. It would be safe to advertise 
for Wednesday evening, 3d April. We can promise 
two or three lectures per week, as you think best ; two 
probably. Here, I am in the hands of a good friend of 
mine, Henry James, & of Parke Godwin, and they 
settled that it should be a two shilling pwenty-five 
cents] audience. I incline to this cheaper ticket; 
though it is a moot point, & many advisers said. Fifty 
cents. The booksellers must decide that, too. Here, 
we have had no cou?'se announced, but only a series of 
unconnected lectures, from night to night. Did I give 
you the titles of such as I have here that are pro- 
nounced producible.? 



L 76 ] 

Enerland ) i i ^ - - 

• • r .u -n- > read here at my last visit. 
Spirit of the Times j -^ 

Natural Aristocracy. Eloquence. Books. The 
Superlative in manners, character & races. 

Of all these I think the fourth seemed to be best 
received here, though perhaps each has had its friends. 
I am promising to read one lecture here, as I believe 
I told you, to please myself, called " Instinct & Inspi- 
ration.'' And so, awaiting your commands with con- 
fidence & love, I am 

Yours, 

R. Waldo Emerson. 

Perhaps I shall mend my programme tomorrow. 
Meantime I shall tread securer if you can ascertain 
for me whether the five Lectures which I read in 
1849-50 were severally these: — 1. England 2. 
Natural Aristocracy 3- Eloquence 4. Spirit of the 
Age, or XIX Century 5. Books. 

1 read a sixth on " Instinct & Inspiration " by day- 
light ; but I should gladly know if any youth or maid 
have a memory so incredibly tenacious as to verify 
this list. Or was there, instead of one of these topics, 
a Lecture called the ''Superlative." 



XXXIV 

Astor House, New York 

20 April, 1850 

My dear Furness, 

William Emerson sent me yesterday your 
kind note, an autograph within & without very re- 
freshing to behold. I should like extremely to come 
to Philadelphia, and have at this moment but one ob- 
jection, and that the gravest ; namely, that you, you 
& your friends, but chiefly you, will feel a certain 
conscience to shoulder my affair, — a thing painful, 
nay intolerable, to think of, and which shall not be 
done. But if you can think of a Bookseller who would 
undertake the charge, and would do all but read the 
lectures, I should like very well to read four or five, 
and should come with the more courage that they 
have been unexpectedly successful here. I am quite 
clear that there should be a functionary in each of our 
cities who would be General Undertaker & Factor for 
Lectures, and who should transact for Agassiz, Dana, 
Mitchell, & me. But it is now too late in the season, 
or will be before I can leave N. Y. ; where I must still 
read three lectures, it seems, (tomorrow, Thursday, 
Tuesday, & probably Thursday,) or certainly two. 



L 78 ] 

We will talk of it for next winter, and, meantime, 
our aesthetic broker can be ripening. The blessings 
of all the days fall on that roof which invites me so 
hospitably ! but I am [^an ?] inveterate churl, & never 
carry my tediousness to the houses of my friends. If, 
however, you can send me some disengaged worldly 
opinion that the experiment is still worth trying, I 
shall be heartily glad of an apology for coming to a 
faithful gossip with you. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo Emerson. 



XXXV 



Phila. Jan. 14th '52. 

Dear friend, 

I will relieve you. It has been decided to put 
off our famous, world-moving course of Liberty-Lec- 
tures till next season. We think it best to do nothing 
in this way unless we can move strongly. Altho' two 
or three of the gentlemen addressed have returned 
half-compliant answers, yet our hope is small of get- 
ting the overpowering array we had set our hearts 
upon. But isn't the time rich — dramatic — histori- 
cal .? Who is Talbot of East Machias who has written 
that admirable *' Nulla vestigia retrorsum " in * The 
Liberty Bell .? ' It does one good to hear such voices 
coming from such Nazareths — If we can only wean 
ourselves from the fond expectation of millennial re- 
sults, & just content ourselves with observing how the 
upper power uses the course of events as a discipline 
& * crisis ' of the human soul, the enjoyment is com- 
plete. 

If you could only come & see us. It would give me 
almost as much pleasure as I anticipate in having our 
children at home again this week. What do you think 



I 80 3 

of our Hungarian [^Kossuth] ? He touched me very 
deeply, but I am very touchable as you know. I have 
excused his apparent dodging of the great cause on 
this side of the world by supposing that he is under 
the impression that we are in the process of Abolition. 
But I wish for his own [^sakej he were less political. 

Ever yrs. 

W. H. FURNESS. 



XXXVI 



Concord, 6 April, 1852. 

My dear friend. 

My affections always silently flowing toward 
you are sure to receive a shock of acceleration every 
month or two by some good office of yours. It was 
always so, and these active virtues accuse my sloth 
& silence. The last of these sunstrokes was a letter 
or a pair of letters which Miss Osgood showed me in 
whole or in part, and, on the instant I promised ex- 
plicit thanks. Yet I was puzzled by being quoted as 
having said to Scherb something quite impossible for 
me to say. Scherb has forgotten, or misconceived. I 
found Philadelphia unexpectedly kind & open. Yet I 
may have said that my Philadelphia audiences always 
have a look as of your gathering, & not mine, — 
which I fancy to be the fact. 

As for Goethe, you are clean wrong altogether, — 
as you will at once feel, if you will sit down to Ecker- 
mann's Conversations for half an hour. Wise, mel- 
low, adequate talk, on all topics indifferently, always 
up to the mark. He is among the Germans what 



L 82 2 

Webster was among the lawyers, as easily superior 
to the great as to the small. 

Medford is a suburb of yours, and I find myself 
gladly your parishioner there, & brag that I am 

Your friend, 

Waldo Emerson. 



C XXXVII 

Phila. April 8, '52. 

My dear Emerson, 

Running about lecturing & acting so power- 
fully upon other people's minds, you give me the im- 
pression of a man too busy to be interrupted by my 
tediousness, & so I always write to you very gingerly. 
Besides one does not like to intrude upon the great 
thoughts with which you keep company. But this af- 
fectionate little note of yours clamors for a word in 
reply. If you have pulled a house down about your 
ears, it is your own fault, I must write to you & as 
much at length as if I knew every word of mine were 
water to your thirsty soul. I am just in the humor. 
Please observe it was no concern for the reputation 
of Phila. but fear lest we were to lose the hope of 
having you here some time that induced me to report 
Mr. Scherb's report. You do mean to come to us by 
&by? 

I spent half the day yesterday with you & Miss 
Margaret F [fuller] & enjoyed you very much. Pass- 
ing as you do with the multitude for the veritable man 
in the moon, you must puzzle people with your com- 
mon sense. 



c 84 n 

I am tyrannized over by little things. When 
Margaret F. speaks of Powers as a man of genius 
idealizing things, it is fatal to my respect for her 
judgement in matters of Art at least. Powers I con- 
sider nothing, not a jot more, than an admirable 
mechanic. His Greek Slave is an abomination. He 
cannot create. If his bust of Webster be better than 
Clevenger's, it must be because Webster was in bet- 
ter trim when he sat to him. He can express only 
what he sees with the bodily eye. Again the incident 
of the Concert Room when Margaret rebuked the 
giddy girl so gently, did she speak the truth when she 
said she hoped the thoughtless child would never 
suffer what she had inflicted on the lovers of music 
that evening ? The very aim of the remark was to cut 
the girl to the quick, & she suffered infinitely more 
than Margaret had suffered in the loss of the music. 
These are small criticisms I know. When she talks of 
her mother & writes to her, then she interests me, — 
& her husband & child — they made her lovely. I 
am attracted & repelled by all this talk & speculation 
about things unseen & unseeable. How continually 
does it degenerate into a wisdom of words, & how 
hard is it to keep humble & self-forgetting. It is a 
favorite idea of mine that the all-ministering Provi- 
dence gives us these speculations & theology & relig- 
ious forms &c. &c. to occupy us & divert our attention 



C 85 ] 

from the work going on within us which our self- 
conceit, if it meddles with it, is sure to spoil ; just as 
we rattle a bunch of keys before a baby when it's 
being vaccinated. I say, as I recollect Carlyle has said 
in one of his letters to you which you let me read, 
your voice is the only one I hear. I don't like Miss 
M. any the better for having been exalted above you 
by some people formerly, not merely because I love 
you, but for the offence to my own judgment. 

My time for Goethe will come, if he is what you 
say. But in your heathen days you once pronounced 
him a great quiz or charlatan — before you knew him, 
and this has delayed my salvation. I do not attempt 
anything in German deeper than Richter. Lessing 
early inspired me with a sincere veneration, & I have 
recently been reading his dramatical criticisms with 
great delight. The man shows himself so plainly be- 
hind & above the writer. His speech is action & his 
words works & weapons. How he pours out his heart 
in contempt of Voltaire for introducing the practice of 
showing himself to the theatre upon a successful re- 
presentation of one of his plays, a practice that became 
disgustingly prevalent with authors until some writer 
of very moderate talent refused to obey the call of the 
pit. <I would rather have been he ' exclaims Lessing, 
* than have written ten Meropes ! ' 

I am fluttering still about that one work of my life 



C 86 3 

which has always interested me chiefly as a work 
of Art. Into this — statue, poem, or what shall it be 
called, my St. Peters ? the Life of Christ, has run all 
the drawing of horses & knights in which you used to 
sympathise so generously. Could I work out & ade- 
quately finish that beautiful fact, I would be willing 
that it should be buried like an ancient statue for a 
thousand years. All I have attempted thus far in print 
seems to me but a hint. I cried over almost every page 
of that last little book of mine from a pure sense of 
reality, nature, & beauty. 

One has great satisfaction in living in one's chil- 
dren. Mendelssohn's father was the son of Mendels- 
sohn, the famous Jew, & when he, the son and father 
of a great man, was young, he was pointed at as the 
son of the great Mendelssohn, and when he grew up 
and became a father, he was pointed at as the father 
of the great Mendelssohn. How much more enviable 
his place than that of either of the two between whom 
he stood ! — 

I forgot — you have been seeing my faithful old 
friends. Miss Lucy & Miss Mary [^Osgood]. What 
wonders they are — learned beyond compare. 

Won't you some time go & sit to William H. 
Should he get a good sketch of you, it would save you 
so much trouble. You could have ever so many da- 
guerreotypes of it Please do it on my account. Wil- 



C 87 D 

liam H. has given no evidence of creative power, but 
he is so childhke & so good, & so often there creeps 
into his drawings an expression independent of hnes 
& shadows, that I think he is at least under the care of 
a good genius. 

But 1 11 detain you no longer. For goodness' sake 
don't dream of answering this unless you can't help it. 
With fervent good wishes for you & yours. 
Very heartily yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 

I am glad to write Concord on the back of this. I 
fancy you, when away from home, as bearing your 
Cross. 



XXXVIII 



Concord 12 May 1853 

My dear friend. 

This is your old malice prepense, & I know it 
for such, — always in conspiracy to inflict benefits & 
hatching good will into deeds, and, to be sure, tis 
none of your work, but only a sudden fortuitous con- 
course of lovers & aiders, such as is, I suppose, at any 
time sporadic in the air of Philadelphia ! Well, you 
are a wonderful man, & an honor to Dame Whit- 
well's a-b, ab school, & will make her famous to all 
time, though I see she was partial, & taught you 
something she taught no other ; for I cannot remem- 
ber that Sam Bradford] or that Walter Langdon sat 
on the bench, though I never see them now without 
belief that you must have given them private re- 
hearsals, & probably showed them the red handker- 
chief (ah beautiful beautiful in my memory!) on 
which the House that Jack built, was depicted. But 
to all others to whom you have not opened your & 
Mrs. Whitwell's heresy, it is still sealed. 

But for your project itself, — it is really very grati- 
fying to me, &, if it prove feasible, I shall not be want- 



C 89 ] 

ing to it. It will be a great advantage to me to know 
of it thus early, and to hold it before me. I am work- 
ing just now on my little English Book & when that 
is done I will think of this. And yet I have often 
thought lately, I should leave the Lyceum to the 
juniors. 

I will write you again. 

Goodbye for today. 

Affectionately, 

R. W. E. 



XXXIX 



Concord, 18 Dec. 1853 

My dear friend, 

I am afflicted with a fast growing terror lest I 
should fail to meet these fine fortunes you are pre- 
paring for me, so you must mix a little wormwood 
from some quarter, that it may not turn my head. Far 
be it from me to murmur or interfere in any manner, 
but, on the contrary, I dispose myself to obey you & 
the gods with all docility. Only I hope I may have 
something good & fit to say to such beneficent im- 
mortals & mortals. For "tickets to the press," O 
certainly ; as, perhaps, by sending them, they may be 
moved to stay away, or, if they come, may listen to 
good counsel & make short reports. For a boarding 
house, I shall be very glad to be provided if you know 
one v^thout seeking. I have uniformly gone to hotels 
— in Cincinnnati, St. Louis, New York, but this would 
be far better. 

You speak of my Mother. I cannot tell you how 
much my house has suffered by the loss of that one 
more room, one more home in it for me & each of us. 
Mamma was made to live, & her death at 85 years 



C 91 1 

took us by surprise, & my v/ife mourns so many 
undone things. There was something majestic in one 
of those old strong frames built to live so tranquilly 
usefully & kindly. The later generation seem to me 
to spend faster. But one of these days we too shall be 
better than now. Then now & ever 

Your affectionate 

Waldo Emerson 

I see that your date is 1 2th. I only got home last 
night from an absence of three days to find your note. 



XL 



Concord 1 14 March 
Mass"^ ) 1854 



My dear Friend, 

I carried all the kind words and deeds of Phila- 
delphia as stock to think on in my northwestern 
journey, and the wonder of them is not less, nor the 
blessing, unto this day. I have never told you that I 
went as far as Milwaukee, and, fault of broken rail- 
road, the last 65 miles in an open carriage ; and found 
true what a settler told me, that " the world was done 
up in large lots, in Wisconsin." I am afraid the space 
is the most interesting feature. And yet the farmer 
is also a colonist, & draws great doses of energy 
from his local necessities. One looks around heed- 
fully, too, because it is plainly the heroic age of Wis- 
consin, and we are spectators Anno Urbis Conditae. 
I came home near three weeks ago, with good hope 
to write a plea for Freedom addressed to my set; which, 
of course, like a Divinity Collegian's first sermon, was 
to exhaust the subject & moral science generally; but 
I fared much as those young gentlemen do, got no 
answer to my passionate queries — nothing but the 



Z 93 l 

echo of my own cries, and had to carry to New York 
a makeshift instead of an oracle. Yet I am still so 
foolish as to believe again that the thing I wished can 
be done, & I shall not cease to try — after a time. I 
have not been to Boston yet with a free hour. As soon 
as I do, I shall try to get my head of Carlyle copied 
for you, as I said. In New York I found there Sam 
Lawrence the London artist, who, you will remember, 
had painted a head of Carlyle, which Mr Carey had 
copied. He had brought a letter to me from C. and 
is painting prosperously in N. Y. He is taking Ban- 
croft's head, & Miss Lynches &c. &c. I find myself 
too much in arrears to my tasks here, to think quite 
yet of making my hoped visit to Philadelphia. Yet I 
shall gladly come. Meantime I am going down to 
Cambridge to learn what good news I can from 
Horace. When is it, what week, what day, that you 
are to come there, & here ? 

Did you read in Littell's Living Age, a little story 
or novellette, called "Art, a Dramatic Sketch." by 
Read, Esq. — I found Dr. Kane's book excel- 
lent. 

Your affectionate, 

Waldo Emerson. 



XLI 



Concord, Saturday Noon July 15 1854 

My dear friend, 

I have just learned with surprise and to me mor- 
tification that your Discourse to the College is set for 
tomorrow. It was set in my mind a week from to- 
morrow ; and I was to see & hear. In this blunder, I 
have acted for our town in getting Theodore Parker 
up here, who is to read his Fourth of July Discourse 
to us tomorrow evening, & is to be my guest. 

It is an absurd Contrete?nps, & I the victim — ir- 
reparable now. What remains but to beseech you, out 
of the greatness of your heart & mind & misericord, 
to come up to me Monday morning, bringing Horace 
with you, & spend Monday with me. I will try to keep 
Parker, in that hope. If you are engaged Monday then 
Tuesday will do ; only send me some word, as soon 
as you pass by a Post Office, that you will come, & 
when, & do not fail me, I entreat. 

Ever your affectionate 

Waldo E. 



XLII 



Concord 22 Aug 1854 

My dear friend, 

You must often have wondered where that da- 
guerre of Carlyle loitered that was destined for you. 
I carried the primitive plate to Boston three times but 
such is my dread of having more copies taken, than I 
wish, that I could never trust it in the hands of the 
chattering operators. At last William E. offered to 
get it done in N, Y. & as there is security in a multi- 
tude, I consented & he tells me it is a perfect copy. I 
hope you have already got it. That was a cruel mis- 
hap to me — that you could not come to me nor I 
to you lately. I was truly grieved that it was a calam- 
ity in your brother's house. I am afraid I shall never 
see you in mine. And you have given away Annie, 
& sent William abroad, & now Horace ; and when 
Frank comes to College, I think your ties must be 
looser, & you can come also and see your friends, & 
renovate Massachusetts. I have had kind notes lately 
from Randolph, & really thought at one time I 
should go to Phila. this summer, but I fear I shall not. 



n 96 3 

You must not, — I had almost forgot to say, — let 
this particular Carlyle be duplicated again, — with- 
out extreme reasons. 

Your loving 

R. W. E. 



XLIII 



Phila. Aug. 25, '54. 

My dear friend, 

I thank you heartily for the Daguerre, [of Car- 
lyle] altho' I have not yet rec^ it. It is safe however, 
if it is in yr brother William's hands. I shall have it in 
time & v^ill not suffer it to be copied. 

I never told you of Frank's great pleasure in the 
stereoscope. It v^as in his hand for days — 

Nan is very happy in her new & pretty home v^th 
her devoted husband, Dr. Wister. He amused us yes- 
terday with an acc^^ of a professional visit he had just 

made over night at our friend F 's at his country 

seat in Jersey, from which he rides 7 miles every way 
on his own estate ! Our Quaker son-in-law told us of 
Friend F 's family prayers conducted by F. him- 
self under difficulties occasioned by great sleepiness & 
the necessity of keeping clear of the Abolitionism 
which was slightly sprinkled through his prayer book. 
In the morning, Mr. F. employs a chaplain a worthy 
man who preaches to his tenants. On the morning, 
however, when Dr. Wpster] was present, they all 
overslept themselves, & prayers were omitted ; the 



C 98 2 

family, as the Dr observed, * having to go upon luck 
for that day, without any special security ' — 

I certainly must see you & yours in Concord, before 
the evil days of old age come. Indeed Life is speeding 
away. Yesterday I attended the funeral of W. Mcll- 
henny of our Athenaeum whom you must recollect. 
He was 74 but did not look 60 — I have recently en- 
joyed Whewell's * Plurality of worlds' particularly 
the chapters on the Nebulae, Fixed Stars, & Planets. 
How bewitching Astronomy is ! I am waiting for cool 
weather to prepare for you 

With love for yours 
Affectionately 

Yr friend W. H. Furness. 



XLIV 



Concord, 13 Oct. 1854. 

My dear friend. 

There was a talk between us of lectures, this 
winter, on the incredible & truth-stranger-than-fiction 
pattern of the last. But I have been so drowsy and im- 
placable, or, at all events so unsuccessful about the 
little book I have had in hand, that it has neither got 
done itself, nor allowed any other thing to be done. 
Setting aside the natural impossibilities of the lecture- 
project, as being the very wax you like to mould, I 
beg you will allow this plea of a badly preoccupied 
workman, & take no step in the affair, for this winter. 
In the course of the summer, I will take care to ripen 
the best I can, various hopeful buds in my conserva- 
tory, whose growth has long been arrested, & so I 
shall have the better hope to justify your habitually 
exaggerating good opinion of your friends 
[^Autograph cut off.] 



XLV 



Phila. Oct. 18, 54. 

My dear Waldo E., 

I was just about moving in the matter of the Lec- 
tures when yr letter came. I am sorry you cannot give 
us the unexpected pleasure & profit, as there would 
be no difficulty in furnishing you with the pecuniary 
inducement. Nevertheless circumstances have oc- 
curred to reconcile me in some measure to yr deci- 
sion. Poor F , with whom we dined, has suffered 

utter wreck of property & character. He has lost all 
his own estate & his wife's, & is reported to have 
forged the signatures of near relatives involving them 
to large amounts. His father is one of tlie rich men 
of our city, being rated at millions. He attempted to 
help his son out of his difficulties & lost $180,000. It 
is a very sad affair. I knew very little of this young 
man. The little I knew of him prepossessed me. I 
liked his liberal ways & unpretending manners. He 
is understood to have gone to Europe. 

As you have given up lecturing here this winter 
you will come & give us that promised summer visit 
& perhaps put a lecture or two in yr trunk ? Do ! 



Why not come & spend a week in our pleasant 
winter climate & bring yr household with you ? 

Did I ever tell you how much Frank was pleased 
with the Stereoscope ? It lasted an unusually long 
time with him — 

I have never acknowledged my obligations to you. 
If you saw any Report of the Anti-Slavery meeting in 
N. Y. last May, you must have seen that I stole some 
of yr thunder & how it reverberated through the 
whole meeting. Almost every speaker that followed 
me took the thought & insisted not on speeches but 
sides. 

Commend me to all yrs & account me 

always one of yr oldest & most devoted friends 

W. H. FURNESS 

A friend, just returned from two years travel in 
Europe tells me he met a Russian gentleman on the 
Danube who inquired about Thay-o-dore Parker, a 
volume of whose [^sermons] he had picked up in a 
Roman Catholic bookstore in Vienna & for whom he 
expressed great admiration. 

And William writes from Berlin that Steinbriick 
the painter of that beautiful picture of the * Visit of 
the Magi ' in the Diisseldorf Collection in N. Y. & 
of my little picture of 'The Tares & the Wheat' 
(over my front mantel) upon hearing of our being 



[ 102 ] 

Unitarians remarked : " My daughter raves about 
Channing," 

So it looks as if some little drops were trickling 
back to the old world. 

If the next No. of the Christian Examiner should 
come in yr way, glance over it & see whether it con- 
tain an Article on a portion of Gliddon's * Types of 
Mankind.' The article is written by a Hungarian 
Jew, a friend of Kossuth's now at Meadville, a hearty 
lover of yours. 



For Form or Outline, my father had a quick eye and retentive 
memory. Down to the last jear of his life, stray scraps of paper, empty 
envelopes, even fly-leaves in books were embellished b\- likenesses, gen- 
erally profiles, of friends and acquaintances. Of course the}- all verged 
on caricature, as, it is to be hoped, is the case with this profile of Mr. 
Thoreau ; but the}' were all unmistakable. That this talent of my 
father is not the exaggeration of filial love, let one noteworthy in- 
stance suffice : — From a recollection of certainl}- fift}- or sixty }ears, 
he drew for the daughters of the Rev. Dr Osgood a likeness, not at 
all a caricature, of their father which they pronounced good and satis- 
factory. 

Even if a profile likeness of Mr. Thoreau be in existence, this sketch 
ma}' serve to recall him, it is sincerely hoped, not unpleasantl}', to his 
surviving friends. — Ed. 



/^Lt"^. • . iv-^ Z^.$ c 



r 











XLVI 



Phila. Nov. 26, 54. 

My dear friend. 

We depend upon hearing the N. Y. Lecture 
here. 

I was glad to see Mr. Thoreau. He was full of in- 
teresting talk for the little while that we saw him, & 
it was amusing to hear your intonations. And then he 
looked so differently from my idea of him. ... He 
had a gUmpse of the Academy [of Natural Sciences] 
as he will tell you — I could not hear him lecture for 
which I was sorry. Miss Caroline Haven heard him, 
& from her report I judge the audience was stupid & 
did not appreciate him. 

With much love 
Yr 

W. H. FURNESS 

Our friend, W [falter] Langdon is in a very deli- 
cate — I might almost say critical state of health — 

5 weeks confined to his room, but reported better 

6 very slowly improving for 2 or 3 days past — a se- 
vere inflammation of one lung — pneumonia I believe 
they call it. 



XLVII 

Concord 26 Jan. 1855. 
My dear Furness, 

Something was said, months ago, of my read- 
ing an Anti-slavery Lecture in Philadelphia. I said, I 
can come 2 Feby, Friday. But it was left hanging a 
little loosely. Is it set down in anybody's programme 
or intention that I shall come & on that day ? If so, 
write me immediately, for I have a pretty good lec- 
ture this time, — good for me, or good " consider- 
ing," and can come : Good, you understand me, if I 
am engaged ; but not good enough to create an occa- 
sion for, if it is not already settled. I beg you to put a 
strong yoke on that blessed constitutional tenderness 
of yours towards me, and answer officially. 

I should like well to come to Philadelphia before I 
set forth on a promised circuit in N. Y. ; and yet the 
absence of Walter Langdon darkens the broad hos- 
pitable City for me. Where has he carried all that 
tenderness and strength ? Where shall I find him 
again ? And for you — you draw all people unto you 
— but I know you must want him day by day. 

I trust you have good news from your travellers. 
Yours affectionately, 

Waldo Emerson. 



XLVIII 



Concord 5 Feby 1855 

You dear good William, friend of me, I tell 
you I am heartily disappointed that since I am to go 
to Phila. & appear before your solemn Antislavery 
Society, I cannot go as I had counted with advantage 
in having three days before me. I offered you long 
since 2 Feb^. with that view. Then I had not this luck- 
less 8th day to dispose of. It was promised some- 
where, & has been released. Now I am to arrive at 
Phila only on the p.m. of the 8, to leave it on the a.m. 
of the 9th to go up the Hudson river, somewhere. 
How am I to see you and your pictures ? How to hear 
the story of them? How to see Sam B and weave my 
annual excuse for not going to his house with bag 
& basket, how to see Philip Randolph, & find why I 
did not come in summer days ? 

Well I am glad the boys are happy in Germany, 
happy in the arts. Who has better right ? Who so 
good ? I am going to La Pierre [3. hotel] . 

Yours, 

Waldo E. 



XLIX 

Concord, Oct. 1 1855 

My dear friend. 

It is my part always to meet your worth with 
unworthiness, and so now. I believe I make the worst 
Antislavery discourses that are made in this country. 
They are only less bad than Slavery. I incline this 
winter to promise none. And have not dared to ac- 
cept any new invitation. Besides, I could not come to 
Phila. — I know not when. I am to keep by the 
printers for six weeks or more ; then I am to go to 
Illinois, once more, & for many weeks, in December 
and before I go and after I return my days are mostly 
promised. Pity me and forgive. Each of us is in a 
prison house whose secrets it were a new crime to 
afflict his brothers with. 

I should have answered your kindest note at once, 
but I had an address on my hands for the Consecration 
of our Cemetery here in this town which I made on 
Saturday. . . . [jic^ You should have added one line 
of the welfare of Annie Wister, & of the boys away 
& at home. My eldest girl Ellen goes daily to school 

to Agassiz. 

Your loving 

Waldo Emerson. 



Sidney Smith's memoirs though so feebly edited, 
— they should have applied to you, instead, — must 
yet have rejoiced your heart. Have you read that 
wonderful book — with all its formlessness & faults 
" Leaves of Grass " ? — 



PhilaOct. 3, 1855. 
My dear friend. 

Remember your own good word. It is not the 
speech that one makes in these days that profits, but 
the side he takes. Even if you could satisfy yourself 
with a lecture & it were the best possible, still you 
would be better & more weighty than it. This is one 
of the great precepts I have got from you & I return 
it to you for your own use in the present case. It ap- 
plies beautifully, don't it ? 

What a privilege it is the next generation is enjoy- 
ing — to be instructed daily by Agassiz. Horace 
writes us he saw Agassiz 's name signed on the rocks 
near some glaciers, date '38, they were illustrating 
his theory. ... 

But do think once more of speaking a word for 
Freedom among these dry bones. Passmore Wil- 
liamson is still in prison & the stones in the streets 
have not cried out. It is dismaying, the stupor & 
death of the public. Every moment makes it worse. 

The wrong which K has done, is not done, but 

doing, swelling out & belittling Neapolitan despo- 
tism. 

Affectionately yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LI 

Concord, lo Oct. 1855 

Ah if you knew how puny & unproductive I 
am ! the pain of Slavery & detestation of our politics 
only working the wrong way to make me more dumb 
& sterile. I see at this moment neither arguments nor 
days to say them in. I am pinned to a printer prob- 
ably till 1 December, and thence onward I have a 
long western journey to the Mississippi back & forth 
for a month or 6 weeks more. The places only are 
fixed, the dates not. After that, new engagements fol- 
low here, tis ignominious to think of. I wait & moan 
and if in the meantime any word of the p] should 
come into me like a sharp sword as it came aforetime 
to good men I shall be as swift as now I am slow to 
carry it to Philadelphia. Indeed, it lies in my heart to 
bring some thing solidly good to that city, before I 
die : as I have said & done nothing there that was con- 
tenting to me. You deserve well of all, best of me. I re- 
joice in the volley of good news you send of the boys. 
Ellen is to tell Agassiz of Horace's finding, today.' 

Your affectionate 

William H. F. ^^^^^ E. 

' While on a walking tour in Switzerland, more than fifty years 
ago, as I approached the Rosenlaui Glacier I noticed on a flat shelving 



LII 



Phila. Sept. 29 1856 

My dear friend, 

I bought a copy of yr last vol. & gave it to 
Dr. Jackson on the Allegheny Mts., expecting to re- 
ceive my copy from you. It has not come yet. Where 
is it^ It is a pity it is so shabbily printed. I have writ- 
ten to Horace whom we expect to see about a month 
hence to bring home Enghsh copies of your vols, 
atho' none can be so valuable as these I have — They 
all came from you. 

Charles Sumner is still here, we mean to keep 
him as long as possible — Friend Sam, who you know 
is a childlike inquirer, whether trying to ascertain yr 
faith as to immortality, or to decide how he shall 
vote, has been determined for Fremont by talk with 

C. S. 

Affectionately 

Yrs 

W. H. FURNESS. 

rock innumerable proofs of Professor Agassiz's Glacial Theory ; and 
called my companion's attention to them. I had not gone a dozen 
paces further when I was thrilled at the sight of the name, deeply 
graven in the rock, of him who, in my recent college days, I had wor- 
shipped as a demi-god : — ' L. Agassiz. 1838.' — Ed. 



LIII 



Oct. 18 '56 

My dear Friend, 

When we were children together I did not 
hesitate to beg from you whatever I wanted & you 
had to give. Why should I hesitate now ? I thank you 
for the copy of your book that I reed some days ago. 
Handsomely as it was bound, it is not what I wanted. 
All your other vols I have — all uniformly bound & 
adorning my bookshelves — all with your autograph 
enriching every vol. I want a copy of * English traits ' 
to correspond, & must receive it from you unbound 
as it would never do to tear off the pretty 'jacket' of 
this copy that you have sent me. You see my neces- 
sities. 

Yr publishers wrote me & referred me to half a 
dozen booksellers, some one of whom had in charge, 
they said, a copy for me, 'from the author.' I caused 
inquiries to be made but the copy has not appeared, 
& I am not sorry, as, since it came through yr pub- 
lishers, it probably had not that written leaf which is 
to make my set of your works as valuable as that ele- 
gant copy of Junius bound for the author, which has 
never been found. 



In my old age there is reviving in me a love of 
handsome books, handsome inside & out. That mag- 
nificent Boy dell's Shakespeare which was given me 
some few years since is the cause of this revival. I 
have one splendid bookcasefull containing very few 
books which no gentleman's library should be with- 
out. Your works are not the least valued among 
these treasures. 

To turn from great things to little — what a mess 
the country is & how the elements spit & sputter ! I 
have already reconciled myself to the non-election of 
Fremont. If he should be Pres^. good man as he may 
be, would he not naturally try to pacify the Slave 
Power & show how constitutional he is ? I fear it . 

The struggle is tremendous. It is the world's 
battle. The regeneration of Europe is to be decided 
here. How grand it is to see the cause of God & man 
making its way against the passions, the interests, the 
will of man ! How sublimely the banner streams out 
against the wind ! Nearly all the Republican speak- 
ers begin with vigorously disclaiming Abolitionism. 
Don't you want to make an Anti Slavery Speech 
which shall be '*the terror of the earth" ? I do. 

Heaven bless you and yours. 

Affectionately yrs 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LIV 



Concord 9Junel857 

My dear friend, 

I have been slow in writing, for I did not find 
my bibliopolic friends, Phillips & Sampson, at all 
courageous about Heine. They have the usual terror 
of booksellers at any new name, & Heine's name is 
totally new to them. Tis very sad, & often weakens 
my sympathy for the craft in this country, — their 
total unacquaintance with the wares they deal in, & 
the makers of the wares. They know only those of 
their own shop, & those which come to them from 
known shops. These particular men, — P. & S. — 
are much less acquainted with books than is usual ; 
for, though bold & able business men, they were not 
bred, I believe, to this business, & having printed 
one or two books which advertising, — their cheval de 
hataille, — could not carry, they have resolved to 
believe henceforward in nothing but Mr Prescott & 
Mrs Stowe ; who were both proved, before they en- 
gaged with them. They told me, they had printed no 
new book, but Jackwood, I think, this year. But let 
not Horace halt a moment. If he gets ready a book of 



[ 114 3 

thoughts & pictures which interest him, he can rely 
that they will interest others, and he will readily find 
a publisher, a month sooner or later. Perhaps these 
very men of ours be eager for the book after a little 
while. 

I have been shut up at home for days & only got 
a chance to go speak to Phillips, the other day. Mun- 
roe I do not now go to ; and Field of F. & Ticknor, 
was away. But I shall be in town again, perhaps to- 
morrow, & will make further inquiries. Have you 
taken your Bible oath never to come to Massachu- 
setts, or never with time enough to see my little vil- 
lage & my girls & boy ? My house, to which I am 
making some important addition of convenience, lacks 
one of the best titles to my love & respect, so long as 
it has not held you. Tell me when you will come & 
I will have Hedge & more good men to meet you. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo E. 



LV 

Concord, 15 Jan, 1858 

My dear friend, ♦ 

I am to be in Philadelphia on the 2 February, 
and certainly shall be glad to obey Mrs. Furness in 
anything she shall command on the following day or 
days : and without reward if she will take the night 
of the 3d. I am glad if you like the Atlantic. We hope 
when it shall be better. Clough's Autobiography be- 
gins in the next number. One would think it would 
be easy to find good criticism ; but this department it 
is hard to fill. Then what I call the Zoroastrian ele- 
ment, & which I think essential to a good American 
journal. Lord Bacon would " note as deficient." And 
I believe further that we have not had a single cor- 
respondent from Philadelphia. I hope we shall yet 
supply all these deficiencies. 

Ever yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo E. 



LVI 



Sept. 14, '59. 

My dear friend. 

How are you ? I have been for a long time in- 
tending to write to you. You must come & read us 
some lectures this winter. We shall make arrange- 
ments therefore. How are you supplied ? 

In looking over some old letters today I came 
across one from you written more than 20 years ago, 
in which you ask me about an old friend & pupil of 
yours, B. P. Hunt, who is now one of my cherished 
ones. You bid me if I meet him salute < the good an- 
gel ' in him. I delight in him greatly. I have had the 
pleasure of seeing him every Sunday & of being ani- 
mated by his presence & sympathy for a year or more 
past. Like his dwelling, which is a suburban spot, 
that the city has grown round without destroying its 
fresh rural character, he keeps a heart in unison with 
Truth & good, & when I wish to regale myself of a 
Monday morning, I jump into a Passenger Car (or 
King's coach) & go out to see Mr. Hunt & talk about 
you & New England. He labours under heart disease 
& is timid about coming to church, fearing that the 
close air may bring on a paroxysm. 



C 117 3 

These old letters, you see, have spoken to me 
across the great gap of time as if just from the Post, 
& I am answering them again. I send you some poor 
words of mine now & then merely as a nod across the 
street, not to inflict upon you the necessity of reading 
what I send. You ought to receive one of these mis- 
sives by this same mail. I am always imposing some 
office of kindness upon you. Whether I am returning 
to my childhood & getting garrulous I know not, but 
for some time past I have had great satisfaction in 
writing & preparing my weekly homily. The * one 
idea ' of which I am accounted the victim, is won- 
drously prolific. It rays out in all directions. 

I depend upon sending your daughter soon a copy 
of a new edition of my < Gems of German Verse ' 
greatly enlarged. 

We are to have a celebration of Schiller's birthday 
here (loth November) & the Song of the Bell is to 
be sung, & there is to be an address in German & I 
am to say something in English. 

How that old letter has set me babbling. Sam was 
in to see us the other evening, the same simple- 
hearted loyal man, a little in the dark about immor- 
tality, or rather disturbed about other folks' darkness, 
immortal himself however in his goodness. 

Are you not amused at .this novel experience of 
growing old ? I am in my 58th year, a grandfather. 



& William H. expects to be married in 2 or 3 weeks. 
You are I believe a year my junior, but whether that 
is being behind or before me in time, I cannot tell. 

Please let me know how you stand affected about 
Lectures & hold me as ever 

heartily yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LVII 



Concord — Sept. 22, 1859 

My dear friend, 

May you live always, as you will; but may 
you live on the earth to keep it bright and warm as 
long as I have a part here ! I always think better of 
myself when I see your letters & that your kindness 
endures. 

And you have taken, as you must, the right part 
in this Unitarian brawl, & have said better what I 
tried to say yesterday to Bartol about Bellows & 
Parker. I met Bellows the other day, & told him how 
wrong I tho't him about Parker. He said, he tho't less 
of men, more of institutions. Certainly, I said, you 
must prefer the putty to the painter. But he could not 
even see that Horace Mann & Parker trained in the 
same company. 

I am heartily glad to see the good gravitation, & 
that you & Hunt have joined. I have owed very happy 
days to him when he was but an overgrown boy, and 
I have ever regretted that he was whirled out of my 
vicinage, & I have met him too rarely to restore our 
relations. It warms my heart to think that you have 
him. 



I 120 ^ 

How dare you ask me again for lectures? Could 
ever a singer learn to say No, when invited to warble ? 
Certainly I should come to you 

I^The rest gone.] 



LVIII 



Sept. 26, '59. 

My dear Ralph, 

You must let me, even should the privilege be 
exclusive, name you so, for so I called you at Miss 
Nancy D.'s & at Mr. Webb's. It identifies you. 

You will not make any arrangements for January 
before consulting us. We must have that new Boston 
course here. That 's decided. 

Your words about our Unitarian * brawl ' refresh 
me. Our miserable little talents are constantly in our 
way. Bellows is one of the many, whose talents, 
ready and instant, anticipate their genius. New York 
too acts upon him mightily, & he is hurried into 
positions which his generous spirit would never 
choose. He seems to me to trifle with the great Truth 
not through levity but impatience & a desire for ef- 
fect, beginning where if one begins he is likely to end, 
outside. A man should think & preach for himself, 
treating himself as representative. So you have taught 
us. 

The unconscious arrogance with which we Chris- 
tians assume to be in the right is getting to be a nui- 



[ 122 ] ' 

sance. W[^endell^ Phillips says nothing can exceed 
the impudence of a Church member, e.g. H. W. Bee- 
cher & H. W. Bellows, in talking about Theodore 
Parker. 

P l^arker] says things that are annoying to us or- 
thodox, but through God's grace I look at him in the 
rough, sketchy, M. Angelo fashion, without picking 
at particulars, & he is a noble fact in our day & will 
illustrate Boston in history. I was grieved that Hedge 
should impugn Conway's motive, calling the Resolu- 
tion an < imposition.' Had the alumni been genial & 
humane, they would have owed thanks to C. for a 
means of grace. I do not believe there is a man of 
them that does not like P[^arker] in his heart. But 
the ' fool's word, consistency' tript them. 

It is worth your coming to us to see our friend 
Hunt's cosy country collegelike library in the midst 
of a city. I have the photograph of that admirable 
crayon of you hanging on my wall, dear to me for 
your sake & Hunt's, who gave it to me. 

Heartily yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LIX 



Concord 6 October 1859 

My dear William, — 

And if I called you so two and fifty years ago, 
tell your wife that her rights to the name are recent 
beside mine. Tell her, too, what she believes already, 
that your heart is no older now than it was then. And 
I find that this affectionate memory of yours which 
spans so vigorously the whole term from Mrs. Whit- 
well's to 1859, makes & keeps the blood warmer in 
all your company. I feel, indeed, in looking at this 
long stretch, what Jonathan Phillips once said to me, 
" Sir, I have lived a very long time." But I also feel 
that Philadelphia is a large town, chiefly distinguished 
as the residence of William Furness & Sam Brad- 
ford. These are the golden ; in the silver class are 
Hunt and Randolph. 

But let me not forget the instant occasion of my 
writing. You say I shall come to Phila. in January. It 
is pleasant to think of. But if I were really thinking to 
come and read, — is January the best time? In Boston, 
I have found, of late years, March, & April, & even 
May, quite as good. The people, are pleased to fancy 



C 124 ] 

somewhat exceptional in my course, which the pre- 
vious excess of lectures does not affect. I ask because 
it is not easy at this time, in my correspondence, to 
keep January sacred. Already it is mortgaged from 
23rd to 31st. But I could hold the first 20 days. 
Another point ; I have already an application for a 
lecture in Phila. It is not comity, is it ? to come to 
singulars when one is coming to the Public ? But 
neither of these questions can you answer, & there- 
fore I shall probably decide to refuse the Phila. ap- 
plicants, & on the other hand invade the sacred Jan- 
uary. 

Yours affectionately, 

Ralph. 



LX 



Oct 11, 59 

My dear Ralph, 

When I talk of January for yoiir Lecture, I 
suppose that time to be most agreeable to you. Why 
not suit yourself, we expect to be independent of 
seasons & public humors, as our purpose is to gather 
your company & to have them ready for you ? You 
need not refuse any invitation to read a single Lecture 
here previously; that will not injure but help a course 
of 5 or 6 afterwards. 

What stirring words have been spoken of late — 
S. Johnson's Sermon in last week's Liberator, & W. 
Phillips' Lecture. J. F. Clarke grows visibly. Truth is 
not a shadow, but full of a divine virtue. The very or 
rather the bare touch of it electrifies & expands. I 
have had O. B. Frothingham here, a wise, calm & 
selfunderstanding young man. New York is the 
better for him. He tells me his father & Theodore 
P[^arker] have been hobnobbing in Switzerland ! 
Is n't it funny? If there is a man whom the soul of 
Dr. F [frothingham] thought it abhorred, it is Theo- 
dore Parker. How he used to denounce him ! I know 



i: 126 2 

not why, unless it was for letting his cat out of the bag 
( Dr. F. being you know in former times our clerical 
infidel ) , but now they meet, countrymen in a foreign 
land, & theological differences become frivolous. How 
good & strong the heart is, tho' we try it sadly with 
our endeavours to make it go our narrow ways in- 
stead of its own broad ones. But goodbye. 

I cherish all your affectionate words. They ring 
of the past. It is pleasant when life is contracting in 
front of us to have it lengthen away into the past, & 
the old playground and school benches become visi- 
ble again. 

Heaven bless you dear friend. 

Affectionately yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 

1426 Pine St. 



LXI 



Concord 23 Dec 1859 

My dear friend. 

Certainly I will come to the Revere House on 
Thursday 29th at noon, and with joy. That day I am 
promised to dine with Mrs. Lowell Putnam in town. 
But if irresistible magnetism of Phila. can be inter- 
cepted on these last days of the year, I will bring you 
to my house the next morning, & keep you ten- 
derly, and all Concord shall ring with joy, and you 
shall dine on Saturday with our Club that I have 
bragged to you, Lowell, Agassiz, Longfellow, & the 
rest. 

Be good & bring your mind to it, my dear William, 
Affectionately, 

Waldo E. 



LXII 



Jan. 9, 60 

My dear Ralph, 

I am filled with sorrow at not seeing you. But 
who can stand before your cold ? It assaulted me so 
fiercely, leaving its marks upon my head & eyes that, 
an old vegetable as I am, I fled before it, fearing that 
erysipelas or something of the sort was going to de- 
tain me. The affection or infliction was new, and as I 
did not know what it portended, I felt I should be at 
home. But I promised to return in a few weeks and 
then I must see you, if all the rest of New England 
goes unseen. I was bound to Medford that Saturday 
by a long pre-engagement. Miss Lucy Osgood had 
lost her sister 3 months since. 

I left a note & book for you with C. Sumner, who 
promised to hand them to you. I fear they are still 
on his centre table. 

I depended upon talking with you about the Lec- 
tures. About five & twenty persons (elect & such as 
are to be saved) have agreed to pay $10 each for the 
course. I think the number may be doubled. When 
all are got, then you will decide the time & come & 



C 129 ] 

inspire us & enjoy yourself. By all the tender memo- 
ries of our childhood, do not, I beseech you, breathe a 
word about my taking trouble &c. I do no such thing. 
You offend against friendship & betray distrust if you 
dare to whisper a word of apology. I want you to 
come & lecture for your sake & my sake & every- 
thing's & everybody's. If there is any trouble to be 
taken, P. Randolph will mind all that. 

And then how I longed to talk with you about the 
times. What a Day of Judgment it is, not only for this 
country but for the world. Milton's fight between 
Heaven & Hell is but a skirmish to the hand to hand 
battle into which we [^are] plunging with the Powers 
of Darkness. 

How I envy Mrs. Mott who does her duty & leaves 
the Almighty to do his. But I want to precipitate re- 
sults. 

God bless you, dear friend. 

Affectionately 

William H. F. 



LXIII 



Concord, 14 Jan. I860 

Dear William, 

You should have stayed a little longer in the 
native air which thought it no wrong to give an 
own son a taste of its quality. It softened in the next 
days & my letter lies still I suppose at the "Revere," 
urging you to come pass the Tuesday or Wednesday 
with me, for I had heard that you were to stay till 
Sunday and testify at the Music Hall. Now it has all 
gone wrong for me who go westward in a few days, 
and, I fear, shall not be at home for a month, say 
about 2oth February. Write you immediately to the 
Music Hall, that you can not come till the last Sun- 
day in February. Then will I receive & hear you. I 
knew nothing of the death of Miss Osgood, & did not 
dream that anyone had claims like mine. But come 
on the last Sunday of February, & you shall be at the 
Club (which you slighted now,) on the last Saturday 
of February. Sumner brought the fair tinted book & 
I brought it home to Ellen, who will, ( if she has not 
already) give her own account of her dealings with 
it. She read to me the other day, the graceful version 



of " the Giant's Plaything," & set me guessing on 
the initials A. L. W. Is that your Annie ? ? 

For the Philadelphia visit of March I read what 
you say, with great eyes. The forces of gravity & of 
caloric joined will draw me and I shall come, there 
can be no doubt. But I will write you again on the 
matter. 

And am ever your bounden 

Waldo E. 

I shall hear the Plea of Peace at the Music Hall ? 



LXIV 



The following extract, from a letter written by her father, 
was most kindly sent to me by Mr. Emerson's daughter, Mrs. 
Forbes, in the assured belief that its affectionate reference to his 
old friend would be always prized by that friend'' s descendants. 

The letter is addressed to Miss Russell, in A fay, 1860, ow 
the eve of her departure, for health's sake, to a milder climate. 
—Ed. 

« I heartily wish to hear that you find the dimate 
of Philadelphia kinder and gladder than ours in Mas- 
sachusetts for the late weeks, and healing and inspir- 
ing to yourself. I delight in that city and reckon it a 
good hospital. William Furness ( senior of course, ) 
has a face like a benediction, and a speech like a bene- 
faction, and his stories more curative than the Phila. 
Faculty of Medicine. I entreat you to put yourself 
under his treatment/ 



LXV 



Dec. 2, '61. 

My dear R. W. 

I send you a copy of some verses which, when 
read to me the other day by Mrs. Wister, struck me 
as smooth & lively enough to grace the pages of the 
Atlantic. They are the work of a young doctor here 
who makes no pretensions (Mitchell by name, he 
married the only daughter of Alfred Elwyn whom 
you recollect) He does not wish to put his name to 
them. So please to regard them as anonymous. If you 
think them worthy will you send them to the Editor 
— I don't know who the Editor is. If I did I think I 
should still send them thro' you as I have pleasure in 
sending you a greeting. I hear of you now & then 
that you are all well except that boy of yours whose 
studies I hear are interrupted by lack of health. I 
trust he is very soon to be all right again. 

And so, as my sister Mary tells me, you are talk- 
ing about old Age — I do not wonder. I do not won- 
der an old man grows garrulous, having so novel an 
experience at hand. So many people have grown old 
& yet nobody ever told me what a new strange thing 



it is. Approaching the end of my 6oth year, I do not 
get used to it. Sometimes when I look at my children, 
grown men & a woman, I laugh outright at such a 
boy as I, invested with such venerable relations — 
wig & spectacles on a baby head. It is hard to get up 
the appropriate dignity. I suppose Nature disables us 
as we grow old, to assist us to maintain the due 
gravity & keep us from irreverend antics. 

And you are of good cheer about the times I know. 
It 's a great day when men are brought perforce in 
contact with ideas that electrify & re-create them. No 
delays nor disasters have yet extinguished in me the 
delight of discovering that we are not a mob accident- 
ally brought together but really a people — that a 
national heart is here beating, very irregularly but 
still beating. 

Sam B. has been living rent free in a rural palace 
the last summer, which I think has comforted him 
in the midst of the great trouble. He would send his 
love to you were he at hand. 

With all good wishes 

Ever & heartily yrs 

W. H. FURNESS 



LXVI 



Concord, 13 February.' 

My dear friend, 

I passed through Philadelphia very sadly the 
other day that I could not stop. I had thought that I 
had engaged to be one night at some <« Spring Gar- 
den," in your purlieus; but, at Washington, I had a 
letter proposing a later day, to which I could not ar- 
range myself, and then found myself using the time 
at Washington I had hoped for Phila. &, in conse- 
quence, dragged on to N. Y., through your sacred 
precinct, without seeing one friendly face. I was the 
more vexed, because I had hived some quite novel 
experiences at Washington for your ear. But the in- 
stant errand was to exculpate myself of neglect of 
your letter. I had at once carried the verses on " Stras- 
burg Clock " to Fields, who agreed to print them, & 
they were to appear in the March number. But some- 
thing hindered this, & they are, I understand, to ap- 

' 'I am almost sure from the text that this refers to the visit to 
Washington in 1862 (Jan.) when he gave his address " Civilization 
at a Pinch," in which he urged Emancipation before the Southerners.' 
— E. W. E. 



pear in April. And now I find at home "John Brown,"' 
which is excellent, & ought to be the most effective 
song that theme has found. I take it to be your own, 
— as much as anything so good can be any one's 
own. And are these lines published? If not, they 
should go to the " Atlantic " at once. If they have not 
appeared in any journal, send me word at once. How 
much there is to say of times & men ! Conway's state- 
ment, on his return, of his Emancipation Argument, I 
thought of great importance, but I fear he does not so 
much justice to it in public, as in tete a tete. I still hope 
that I may yet see you ere long. 

Yours affectionately, 

R. Waldo E. 

' Some verses composed by my father. — Ed. 



LXVII 



Feb. 1 7 '62 

My dear friend. 

Thanks for your kind care of the < Strasburg 
Clock' — The author, an unpretending & right love- 
able man, is son-in-law of Alfred Elwyn whom you 
remember. I was taken with the verses partly because 
they came from so unexpected a quarter. 

As to the John Brown song I 'm pleased that you 
like it. I should like it better — good Saxon that it is, 
if W. H. F. did not think so well of it. His judgement 
is not worth a pin in a case in which he is so deeply 
interested. I sent a copy to Foster the man who com- 
poses the popular negro melodies in the hope that it 
may sing itself in his heart & ear. Mrs. Wister makes 

it go to *'A man's a man for a' that" — & M 

F has set it to a very taking old Scotch march, a 

little too lively. It appeared, I see, in last week's 
Anti-Slavery Standard, with the vexatious omission 
of a word — But let it go, whatever of the kind is alive, 
always puts out legs or wings. 

How glad we should have been to see you. But we 
had but faint hopes of it. It's a pity we missed your 



C 138 3 

lecture. Had you only dropt me a line, it certainly 
could have been managed. 

These are grand times. Virginia almost squares 
her debt by the gift of Conway. He trusted, I hear, 
in Washington to his old Methodist habit of using no 
notes. The experience was blest to him for he came 
to my house & spent two days in writing out his Lec- 
ture — It was very striking. He read it to us. 

But I wonder at the taste of the Upper Powers in 
tolerating such monstrous stupidity in mankind. Just 
think of New England folks petitioning Congress to 
let the negro alone. Petition the mouse under the cat's 
paw to let the cat alone! "Gentlemen, I respect yr 
feelings, but I am astonished at your existence," as 
Sidney Smith says to the Honest No-popery people — 
Heartily as ever 
Yrs 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LXVIII 

Concord, 16 Nov^ ' 

My dear friend, 

I was grieved to be so slow, but I did not get 
to Boston with my scroll till yesterday morning. I 
first had a talk with Fields but there was plainly no 
use in negotiation there, when the first point was, that, 
if it should be desirable to him to print it, he could 
not yet for six months. So I sought Allen of the Ex- 
aminer. He was not in town, but at Northfield. Fox 
I found, and he was altogether friendly and received 
the MS with tenderness and care, in behalf of Allen, 
to whom it must go. I told him my experience & im- 
pressions about it, which he engaged to transmit to 
Allen. And Fox did not seem to believe that the two 
papers on Renan they had printed need hinder the 
publishing of this. On my next visit to town, I will 
see Fox again, or Allen. 

I give you joy on the elections and the good omen 
to mankind. Proud of heart you have a right to be 
with your devotion without an interval. You have a 
right to read the tidings of great joy which one finds 

1863 — or 1 864. — E. W. E. 



[ 140 ] 

in obscure scraps scattered in every journal; < Eman- 
cipation in Maryland,' *in Louisiana,' Mn Tenessee,' 
* in Missouri,' &c. And yet I know well how meekly 
you will wear your dazzling crown. May Peace and 
Love and Prosperity lacquey your steps ! — on one 
condition, however, that you come to see 

Your affectionate 

R. W. E. 



LXIX 



Phila. March 31, 'er. 

My dear friend. 

Our sorrow has countless alleviations/ We 
are lifted up & sustained by the sympathy which has 
come to us from so many who knew our boy & ap- 
preciated him. It is a happiness that you knew him & 
that he knew you. The last luxury he gave himself 
was having his wellworn copy of yr Poems very 
handsomely bound. With what delicious intelligence 
did he read the **Woodnotes/' his favorite — His 
tones sound in my ears at the remembrance — I can- 
not think I deceive myself — More than all he had 
done, more than all I looked for him to do, & my ex- 
pectation knew no bounds, I delighted in his spirit 
& divine quality as an artist. I think I could not have 
been so interested in his work, had I discerned in him 
the slightest disposition to seek compensation either 
in fame or money. He had no need to obey your in- 
junction to throw away his paint, & kneel with the 
worshippers. He painted on his knees. His portraits 

' Written after the sudden death of his eldest son, W. H. F., jr, — 
an artist of unusual promise. — Ed. 



[142 ] 

were not made, they grew. He was every day feeling 
more & more that they came of themselves. He saw 
faults in the best of them & yet the poorest were 
sacred to him — 

But I must restrain myself & not talk of him too 
much. His death changes life for us. The new 
world into which it has led us is not gloomy. I can- 
not tell you what it is like. It has a strange charm. 
We move about as in a dream which the thought of 
him makes sad & tender & bright 

I will send you a photograph of him from a da- 
guerreotype taken when he was about 30 — It is so 
beautiful that I please myself with thinking that you 
will pin it up under the portrait of Edith — If you do 
not receive it directly, I will send it to Little, Brown & 
Go's where, when you go to the city, please call for it. 

Remember me to your brother W"^. & all yours 

Heaven bless & keep us all 

Lovingly Yr lifelong friend 

W. H. FURNESS. 

I do not consider his portrait of you (you see af- 
fection does not blind me) as good as he would have 
made it — I advised him not to finish it, to keep it on 
hand indefinitely & work upon it as he might have 
opportunity. 



LXX 



Sept 15 '68 

My dear Friend, 

I have this moment heard of the death of yr 
brother. It shocks me. I knew his health was feeble, 
but I never tho't that we were so soon to lose him. I 
held him in great respect & whenever I was in N. Y. 
for a day or two, I loved to look in upon him & have 
a little chat. What a fine sense he had of everything 
good. The last time I was in N. Y. I heard of him but 
I did not go to see him because my stay was so short 
& he seemed so far distant — I am very sorry now. 
I have a little book just coming out, & he was one of 
the few persons that I wished to send it to — I think 
he would have given it such a kind reception: — l 
Heaven bless him — 

Our hold is loosening, dear friend. There is some- 
thing more than comfort in living among these 
blessed memories — How large is my debt to you, & 
my children's ! I cannot speak of it without becoming 
incoherent, voice & heart are choked. What a deli- 
cious breathing of natural piety ' Terminus ' is ! A 
thousand blessings on you too, dear, admirable 



C 144 3 

friend. This wave which has landed yr brother before 
us — this too you know is < charmed ' 

Affectionately 

W. H. FURNESS. 



LXXI 



Phila Sept. 21 '69 

My dear friend, 

I have seen our friend T. B. Pugh once or 
twice lately & he has asked me to write to you & as- 
sure you, as I can with confidence, that there will be 
no lack of a crowd if you will come & make one of 
his * Star Course of Lectures ' 

He has an excellent faculty of getting up such 
things & you can come in perfect faith 

We are growing old, dear friend, & it seems to 
me all the deaths in the newspapers are of persons 
about our age between 60 & 65 & 70. I long to see 
your kind face once more — I hate travelling & hav- 
ing been some 5 & 40 years or thereabouts in this 
place, my roots have struck deep, I can't bear to be 
away lest some old friend should drop off. 

Wm's wife & child are at home again & she lets 
me keep this portrait of you, & for yr sake & the art- 
ist's it is a perpetual comforter — I have half a dozen 
grandchildren & they are so fine that the world may 
go now as it will, a generation is coming that will set 
all right — I am as much interested as ever in my old 



C 146 ] 

hobby, the historical facts of the Life of Jesus. Since 
the world has been disputing about him for so many 
centuries, I can't think it's the waste of a life to give 
it to the attempt to establish the truth about him — 
I should have sent you my last little book but I was 
afraid it might create in you a feeling that you must 
read it. 

I have spent the Summer Vacation at Horace's 
eleven miles away. As when relaxation is the order 
of the day, one must have a little work by way of 
amusement, I have been at the dear old subject again 
& believe now that I have set the case in such a light 
that our radicals must see it, not that I have any seri- 
ous design of publishing any more. Its good stuff for 
preaching. 

I rode a few squares in the street cars with Sam B. 
this morning & he is immortally the same. Heaven 
bless him ! 

Glad as I must be to hear from you, don't write 
unless you can't help it but take my word for the 
success of the Lecture & hold me about your oldest 
friend alive 

Affectionately 

W. H. FURNESS 



LXXII 



Concord — Tuesday, Eve. 23 Nov.' 

My dear William, 

You are very welcome to Massachusetts & to 
me. In the first place, keep yourself safe from all en- 
gagements for Saturday, when you must dine with 
the Saturday Club, who all are or will be your friends. 
Secondly, though first in time, you must come up 
into the November pastures on Thursday, in the 1 1 
o'clock Fitchburg train, & spend a day with me ; & 
my wife & Ellen Emerson, & Edith Forbes — who is 
here for a week, — & Edith Forbes's picture,^ which 
is a perpetual ornament & memorial dearly prized, — 
shall greet you well. I passed through Cambridge 
this morning without a guess of the sojourner within 
the gates. Yet cannot at this moment fix the hour 
when I can come to you. 

Ever affectionately yours 

R. W. Emerson. 

' Probably about 1868 or 1869. — E. W. E. 

' A portrait of Mrs. Forbes, by W. H. F., jr. — Ed. 



LXXIII 



Boston, Thursday, [November?] 1869. 

11.30 A. M. 

My dear friend, 

I have been following [^you] since early morn- 
ing with a houndlike closeness which deserved a better 
success. At no expected point will you appear. I was 
to bring you home with me at ii o'c. Now I wish at 
least to make it certain that you will dine with me at 
the Saturday Club at 2.30 p.m. at the Parker House 
day after tomorrow and if possible go home with me 
thereafter. Today I wall come to this Unitarian Office 
at 1 . o'clock & shall be at the Athenaeum mainly till 
then. 

Yours always, 

R. W. E. 



Samuel Bradford 



^ 



LXXIV 



Concord 4 February, 1870.' 

My dear Sam, 

I have just received your kind note, & am al- 
most ashamed to say, as often before, that when I go 
on these prof essional errands I am very bad company, 
& must go to an inn. A lecture is a nervous disorder 
& hides itself like other distempers in a chamber. But 
I am glad to have the hope of seeing you & your 
household once again. Tis long since I have heard 
from you except through your loving note, after my 
brother's death. 

For William Furness when he was here never 
showed me his face though I pursued him in Cam- 
bridge & Boston for two days in vain. He had his 
grandchild with him (as well as his own affairs,) & 
the poor little boy must suddenly be carried home to 
die. I almost fear to see him after such griefs as he 
has had. 

* Through the kindness of Miss Annie Bradford I am enabled to 
print this letter to her father ; and also another dated ' 1 1 March 
^75.^ The triple friendship would be insubstantial without this tan- 
gible proof. — Ed. 



[ 150 ] 

I hope to be in the Lapierre House some time on 
Monday, perhaps early in the afternoon and depend 
on seeing you there as well as in your own house. 
^ With kind remembrances to your wife & children. 

Affectionately yours, 

R. W. Emerson. 
Samuel Bradford. 



LXXV 

I am very sorry to trouble you, my dear 
Waldo, but I fear that you have not received a print 
which I sent you more than a week ago, and of which 
I am anxiously waiting to have your judgment and 
Mrs. Emerson's. 

I do not at present intend to print more than a 
dozen or two. Altho' the few of your friends who 
•have seen it here are entirely pleased with it, yet I 
shall not consider that I have an official imprimatur 
without the favourable opinion of your family circle. 
It does not, no engraving can, come up to the pre- 
cious original portrait but does Miss Emily S[;artain] 
great credit. 

Ever cordially yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 

Phila.,Dec. 15, '71. 



LXXVI 



Concord, 17 Dec^ 1871. 

My dear Furness, 

I have just now returned from an unexpected 
visit, — say rather untimed visit, to the West, which I 
had promised for a certain date, which date I must 
think the local Committee altered — (I hope by mis- 
take) to a date more convenient to them, & then as- 
sured me by repeated telegrams that they had my 
own signature to their date, & so led me from my 
Thanksgiving party just gathered for the morrow, to 
the doleful journey. Then it appeared no such signa- 
ture could be found. At home again, I found your 
letter, & your Sartain copy ' of William Furness's pic- 
ture, safely arrived. I have, as I suppose all old people 
have, a little terror at facing one's ovm face, — nay, I 
think I have a good deal of unwillingness, increasing 
on each experiment. But I will not quote to you 
Richard III.'s soliloquy — Well, my alarm was not a 
little relieved on drawing out & positing the head. It 
was certainly a kinder & more desirable figure & ex- 

' A mezzotint engraving of the portrait of Mr. Emerson by W. 
H.F.,jr. — Ed. 



pression than I fear any photograph would give me. 
My wife was called, & instantly adopted it, & declared 
it was not only a good picture, but an excellent like- 
ness, — better than any other. My daughter Ellen 
found it good, & Elizabeth Hoar found in it a likeness 
of all the Emersons ; — so that nothing is left me but 
to express my thanks to Miss Sartain, the artist, & to 
yourself for your steadfast tenderness to your friend, 
which led your son to this work, which it seems was 
so skilfully & masterly done. All the year round I re- 
member him as a benefactor in the admirable picture 
of Edith E. Forbes which beams his praise in my 
parlor. So you shall do what you & Miss Sartain think 
proper with this drawing, with the goodwill of this 
household. If she prints copies, I shall be glad to have 
her send me, say 12 copies at the fixed price. For 
yourself — if you do not come to see me, I shall 
come & see you. 

Affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 



LXXVII 

My dear Waldo, 

I am amply rewarded for waiting. Altho' we 
all rejoiced in Miss Sartain's success, yet I feared 
your innermost circle might not be as well pleased. 
I am under an obligation to you & Mrs. Emerson & 
Miss Ellen for liking the print. It is such a precious 
souvenir on so many dear accounts that I have no 
mind to sell it. I desire even to guard it against the 
photographers. You give me gratifying proof of your 
liking by wishing for so many. You shall have 12 
copies, but they are not for sale. The steel plate is 
my property. Sam B[|radford] shall have it & Benj. 
Hunt & some others of our friends, yours & mine. 

Those Western folk were not worthy of you. You 
must never again go farther from home than Phila- 
delphia. 

We had a high day last Sunday at our Church — 
R [Robert] Colly er & Charles Ames. Do you know 
Ames? second to no man in the American pulpit, a 
glorious fellow. 

With loving regards for all who love you 

Yours ever 

W. H. FURNESS. 
Phila. Dec. 20, '71. 



LXXVIII 



Concord 11 Augt. 'r2. 

My dear William Furness, 

If ever man deserved well of his friend, it is 
you. Yet it has happened to me again & again by 
some inopportune chance to be hindered or disabled 
when most I ought & most I wished to write to you. 
It is too ridiculous that a fire should make an old 
scholar sick : but the exposures of that morning, & the 
necessities of the following days which kept me a large 
part of the time in the blaze of the sun have in every 
way demoralized me for the present, — incapable of 
any sane or just action. 

Be at rest however about the noble picture which 
your son made of Edith Forbes. It hung in the parlor, 
& was carried out in perfect safety before the fall of 
a chimney broke in the ceiling of the room. We are 
very happy in its preservation. Tomorrow we look 
for the arrival of Edith F. with her husband & four 
children at Boston from Liverpool — quite ignorant 
of our disaster. 

I am sorry to learn that I never acknowledged the 
receipt of the twelve copies of Miss Sartain's copy of 



[ 156 ] 

William F.'s picture of me. I believe they were sent 
to my house whilst I was in California, and with the 
firm intention to write, I suppose, as has happened to 
me before, — that I soon persuaded myself that I had 
written my thanks. These signal proofs of my debility 
& decay ought to persuade you at your first northern 
excursion to come & re-animate & renew the failing 
powers of 

Your still affectionate old friend, 

R. W. Emerson. 



LXXIX 



You are to read a lecture here on the i8th 
prox. Now, friend beloved, do give your old friend 
the happiness of having you once more under his roof. 
You shall be as free as air. We have no household 
ways to hamper you. We observe no hours. We 
have a comfortable bedchamber, large, with a com- 
fortable little parlor adjoining. They shall be your 
castle. They have long been unoccupied, except by 
occasional guests, as Frank and his family are no 
longer dwelling with us. And besides I have ended 
my pastorate with my fifty years, & am not a poor 
minister. So do come to us. You will surely come, if 
your quick conceiving imagination will only dwell for 
a moment on the pleasure you will give us both. Mrs. 
Furness joins me in every word that I say & will only 
be too happy to welcome Mrs. Emerson and your 
daughter with you. , 

Consider too whether you cannot take the oppor- 
tunity of doing something more than giving us one 
lecture. 

I almost wish I had not forgiven you for not an- 
swering my letters. I might found some claim upon 
you on that score. 



C 158 ] 

You will answer this & say that 1426 Pine St. 
shall be your home in Philadelphia. If you do not 
answer, I shall take silence for consent & bless my- 
self. 

Heartily & faithfully 

Your ancient friend, 

W. H. FURNESS. 
Philadelphia, Feb. 5, '75. 

Is it possible that you have been untouched by the 
grace with which I have resigned you on your past 
visits to Hotels ? 

Your shadow ' is on our walls, let us have the sub- 
stance once more before we depart. 

' This Portrait of Mr. Emerson by W. H. Fumess, jr., is now, by 
bequest, in the possession of The Academy of the Fine Arts' in Phila- 
delphia. — Ed. 



Ml 



LXXX 



Concord, Feb. 10, '75. 

My dear friend. 

Oldest friend of all, — old as Mrs. Whitwell's 
school, & remembered still with that red & white 
handkerchief which charmed me with its cats & rats 
of pre-historic art, & later with your own native 
genius with pencil & pen, up & upward from Latin 
School & Mr. Webb's noonday's writing, to Harvard, 
— you, my only Maecenas, & I your adoring critic, 
& so on & onward, but always the same, a small mu- 
tual admiration society of two, — which we seem to 
have founded in Summer Street, and never quite for- 
gotten despite the 300 miles, tyrannical miles be- 
tween Philad. & Concord — Well what shall I say in 
my defence of my stolid silence at which you hint. 
Why, only this, — that while you have, I believe, 
some months advance of me in age, the gods have 
given you some draught of their perennial cup & 
withheld the same from me. I have for the last two 
years, I believe, written nothing in my once diurnal 
manuscripts & never a letter that I could omit (inclu- 
sive too of some that I ought not omit) and this ap- 



i: i6o ] 

plies to none more than yours. Now comes your new 
letter with all your affectionate memories & presence 
fresh as roses. I had received an invitation from Mr. 
Childs, (who had sent me for years his monthly 
papers, until they ended though I have never seen 
him) with large invitation to his house, & with some 
deliberation I said Yes, & wrote him so, in spite of my 
almost uniform practice of choosing the hotel when I 
read lectures, for the reason that my lecture is never 
finished, but always needs a super-final attention. 
Then came your letter, & I must obey it. My daugh- 
ter Ellen who goes always with my antiquity, insists 
that we shall, and I must write no to Mr. Childs. So 
you & Mrs. Furness receive our affectionate thanks 
for the welcome you have sent us. My love to Sam 
Bradford, if you meet him. 

Your affectionate 

R. W. Emerson. 

My Wife — too much an invalid, sends you her 
kindest regards. 



LXXXI 



February, 1875. 

My dear old friend, 

A thousand thanks for the promised favor. 
Mrs. Emerson's words to me, that one time I was in 
Concord, are fulfilled : Miss Ellen is *your guide, 
philosopher, & friend.' 

I went this morning to see our friend Childs, a man 
of marvellously sweet nature. His countenance is a 
demonstration of the fact that his first progenitor's 
features have re-appeared in him, the features that 
suggested the family name, so childlike are they. 
Twenty applications may be made to him in a day for 
charitable objects of all sorts & not one of them but 
will have a benefaction, & the last will be as kindly 
met as the first. I went to see him for I was greatly in 
his debt. He had a great entertainment the other 
evening. Presidents & English Earls, & all manner of 
distinguished persons were invited & special trains 
from & to New York & Baltimore & Washington, 
were provided for them, & if you had hinted that 
you would come, there would have been a special car 
for you from Concord to Philadelphia. I was invited 



but I neither went nor did I answer the card of invi- 
tation. That was one item against me. Then he had 
tried to get Charles Lamb's MS. of the Dissertation 
on Roast Pig & I have it. That was another. And 
lastly I am taking you from him. To be sure this was 
only taking my own property. He was as gracious & 
cordial as possible, cancelling the whole debt in the 
handsomest manner. 

We collected a little while ago some eighty pounds 
for Mrs. Moxon, C. Lamb's adopted daughter, who 
with a large family was represented to us as being in 
straitened circumstances. I went to friend Childs. 
He had already sent her a hill for twenty-Jive pounds, 
making the donation more than a hundred pounds 
in all. 

Be entirely at your ease. This letter is unanswer- 
able. O those dear old times. I have not to this hour 
become insensible to the delicious flattery of your 
scorn of me when I once gave up one of my immortal 
works of Art in exchange for an architectural draw- 
ing of McClure's (do you recollect a boy of that 
name?) His genius ran exclusively in that line. I was 
charmed with his colonnades & ready to give a whole 
troop of Boston Hussars for one of his sketches, 
which, however, you did not think much of. 

Please don't make any engagements that will 
shorten your visit to us. Take it leisurely. But I have 



i: 163 ] 

Miss Ellen in our interest. She will send us a tele- 
gram, telling us what train you come by. Our children 
must become acquainted, & you must give them a 
little time. 

With loving thoughts. 

Yours, 

W. H. FURNESS. 

In resigning my pulpit the other day I was em- 
boldened by your warrant. Miss Fanny Clarke who 
travelled with you in Egypt some two years ago, told 
me, after I had told her that purpose, that you said 
upon her telling you that I had just completed my 
48th year, you hoped I would resign at the end of 50 
years. You have forgotten it, I suppose. 



LXXXII 



Concord, 11 March, ^75. 

My dear Sam, 

I am delighted to see your writing again, & to 
be invited again to your home. Surely I shall come to 
see you, but it is now settled that I am to come with 
my daughter Ellen to William Furness's house. 

You know that he & I were first acquainted at 
Mrs. Whitwell's School — aged 4 & 5, — & you & I 
never until 5 or 6 ; so he plainly had the oldest claim. 
Happy I that can claim two such sturdy friends in 
my seventy first Spring. I believe all three of us have 
agreed not to grow old, — certainly not to each other 
— and I am glad to read what you say of Dr. Fur- 
ness's, & what of your ovm family. Give my thank- 
ful regards to the last, & I remain 

Your affectionate 

R. W. Emerson 
Samuel Bradford, Esq. 



LXXXIII 

25 March, 1875 

My dear Waldo, 

As I doubt not you would never have forgiven 
Adam had he been so ungentlemanly, not to say un- 
christian, as to refuse to take a bite of the apple which 
had the marks of his lady's teeth in it, forbidden tho' 
it was — we should all of us be indeed ** girt in the 
poisoned robes of hereditary depravity'* had he been 
so base, — you will surely not find it in your heart to 
condemn our photographic friend, Gutekunst, for 
taking advantage of the opportunity, &, when the 
pleasure of mankind was concerned, disregarding all 
considerations of personal veracity, &, at one of the 
sittings of the Three Boys, directing the attention of 
the sun particularly to yourself. 

I send you a specimen of the result. He says he 
honestly meant to take us all three, but Sam's & 
mine were failures, while yours was so good, he cut 
it out, & you have it with the others which I sent by 
this mail. Either the photographer aimed particularly 

* Repeated some 60 years ago with admiring intonation 
by R. W. E. to W. H. F. from a sermon by N. L. F[roth- 
ingham] . 



. c: 166 ] 

at you, or the divinity you wot of, which is always 
whittling ends, got command of the instrument. 

We are all so pleased with this single head that, 
had I been an accomplice in its production, I should 
not be ashamed of it. After all Mr. G. puts the nega- 
tive entirely at your disposal. If you say the word, it 
shall be destroyed. 

The other specimens which I send you are num- 
bered 1, 2, 3, (the 4th was poor) . Please let us know 
which is liked best, & of which you prefer to have a 
number. The photographer tells me they can be en- 
larged. 

Will you assure Mr. Charles Hudson that I am not 
the most impudent of men. His Committee have hon- 
ored me with an invitation to your great Celebration. 
In answering it, I have been so bold as to ask whether 
Horace Binney be invited, a Watertown man, born 
five years after the Battle was fought, graduate of 
Harvard, the Glory of our Bar. He would not think 
of coming to you but he might send you a patriotic 
word. He is understood to be in full possession of his 
fine powers. 

What a delightful memory we are enriched with ! 
The happy visit ! 

With the heartiest good wishes for you all 

Affectionately 

W. H. FURNESS. 



m 



LXXXIV 



Concord, April 3, ^75. 

My dear William Furness, best of boys and best of 
men, 

I never write in these days, but must rejoice in 
your existence & perfect preservation when all your 
Contemporaries are shedding theirs. The photographs 
came, & I tried to compare & decide which to keep & 
which to burn, but was too glad to leave them to Ellen 
for judgment. Each was best to one sitter but Ellen 
shall choose. Meantime I rejoice in the recollection 
of your happiest family which seems never to have 
had but one loss. With your possession & your mem- 
ories, I count you the most favored of contemporary 
men. After seeing your children, to find your brother 
still at the next door to you, — was a joyful wonder. 
I send my kindest regards to your Wife, & to all & 
each of these; & please tell them that there is an old 
man in the Country not far from Boston who would 
dearly like to see their faces in his house, & to show 
them to his neighbours, some of whom are very esti- 



i: 168 1 

mable persons. And do not forget to give my love 
to Sam Bradford. 

[^Autograph cut out.^ 

I sent our Committee's card of invitation to Mr. 
Horace Binney as you suggested. 



LXXXV 

Concord, May 7, ''75. 
My dear William Furness, 

My Wife prays me to assure you of her sincere 
thanks for the photograph which she received from 
you through the hands of Mr. Wilde, a few days ago. 
She knows well the rare good fortune — no, — the 
blessing that her husband has received in his friends, 
- — of whom you are the earliest, — & by us both 
reckoned the perfect man. You may rest assured she 
has heard in full from Ellen & me the story of what 
we saw & heard in your house & circle, of a felicity 
— I think without parallel in my observation, and she 
rejoices with us therein. I think it would be graceful 
in you to come once more to your mother Massa- 
chusetts & make her proud of her too long absent 
son. I long to see you in my rebuilded house, and our 
growing village & its lauded " Public Library," & 
our Saturday Club in the City (which you must time 
your visit to embrace,) Mem. last Saturday of each 
month. ) 

With kindest regards to Sam Bradford, whom it 
was a comfort to see, and grateful remembrances to 
your family. 

Affectionately, 

R. W. Emerson. 



LXXXVI 

Concord, June 2. 

Dearest Friend, 

I hear with joy that you are near and will come 
nearer to me. Come at once on the receipt of this 
prayer, and come to stay generously. My wife insists 
that I shall add her eager wishes to mine. 

Your oldest friend, 

R. W. Emerson. 



m I 



LXXXVII 



June 20, '75. 
Lindenshade. 

May I make bold, my dear Waldo, to remind 
you of your kind offer to send Horace, Herman 
Grimm's word about Hamlet, after you had possessed 
yourself of its purport ? 

We came home something more than a week ago 
with most pleasant memories of Concord & our New 
England visit altogether. I suppose I should go there 
oftener if I would escape missing sadly so many that 
I loved & venerated. Everything there seemed to me 
to be in the hands of boys, very good & bright boys 
indeed, but I would fain have seen the fathers. 

Mrs. Furness joins me in friendliest remem- 
brances. With hearty good wishes for you & yours. 
Affectionately your oldest friend, 

W. H. Furness. 



LXXXVIII 



My dear William 

You are not to be forgiven for failing me on 
Saturday, — as if anybody in nature except alone 
your brother James, could prove pre-engagement 
over me. Your only plea is that it was you who did it, 
& that I must admit as sovran. 

But I cannot come to town today , am held not 
with ** light irons" to my house & study, — and for 
days ; yet Thursday or Friday I am to go thro Boston 
to a " Brown Meeting" in Salem. You will then come 
out & spend Wednesday with me. A train comes at 1 1 
o'c from Fitchburg Depot. That is a good William 
F. We shall greet you dearly, 

Ralph Waldo E. 



LXXXIX 



Concord, Dec. 23.' 

My dear friend. 

Your beautiful gift has come safely to me, and 
charms us all in this house. I think I must carry it to 
the Town Library for some days to give every one a 
sight. Happy was the day for me when your father 
removed his family into Summer Street at the next 
door to the First Church minister's house which my 
mother was still allowed to hold long after my father's 
death. 

I believe that you and I had met before in the dame's 
school in Summer Street, to read and spell ; after that, 
at the Latin School, — and I recall visits to your house 
on Fort hill. In this long memory I cannot recall any 
fault in my friend ; but a great heart, as well as great 
powers. I rejoice in the perfect preservation of his 
faculties when younger men are losing theirs. Receive 
the thanks of my wife and daughter & son with 

R. W. E.'s. 

' Date unknown, and impossible to fix. Nor is there any clue to the 
' beautiful gift.' — Ed. 



xc 



Ellen asks me what message I wish to send 
you. I tell her immortal love, & the gladness that, 
though you count more months than I, you have not 
& shall not, like me, lose the names, when you wish 
to call them, of your contemporary or antecedent 
friends & teachers. 

Ralph Waldo E. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



FORTUS 



The original MS of this ' Poem' is now owned by the chil- 
dren of the Rev. Daniel Parker Noyes, of Byfield, Massa- 
chusetts, to whom it came by bequest from his Aunt, Miss 
Hannah, daughter of Dr Elijah Parish, Minister of Byfield 
parish. How it came into the possession of Miss Parish is 
not known. She was a woman, however, of literary tastes, 
in touch with the writers of her day, and a ' snapper up of 
unconsidered trifles.' 

The MS, whereof the size is reproduced in the photo- 
graphs, is enclosed in a paper wrapper, bearing on the inside 
of the last page the following note : — ' This whimsical em- 
ployment of my time was begun at Bennett Str. when I was 
10 years old & completed by various dates to 1816. Cam- 
bridge 1821.' 

This 'Completion' consists of what are, in the MS itself, 
termed 'ELditors Notes,' appended to the Poem. These 
'Notes' are written in a script more mature than that of the 
Poem itself, and to me are not pleasing. They do not suggest 
that reverence for youth and the 'angel' therein, which was 
later a characteristic of Mr. Emerson. They hold up to ridi- 
cule certain youthful expressions in the poem, and quite 
needlessly point out certain obvious defects. The touch is 
not light, and shows an apparent lack of general appreciation 
which is unpleasant, and allowable only in the author him- 
self. I have therefore omitted them. We want to see nothing 



C 178 ] 

to the right or to the left, but, directly in front, a little boy 
in blue nankeen, with frowzled hair, most sunny smile, 
and his quill pen in a hand not over clean. 

On the title-page, after the word ' Emendations ' there is 
in the MS the addition ' & Notes ' partly erased. It has been 
expunged from the photograph. I cannot but believe that 
the words ' Eighth Edition with Emendations ' are also late 
additions. Not only from the character of the writing, but 
because the fun of the exaggeration, feeble at best, is not 
boys' fun at the age of ten. 



The History of 
FORTUS 

In days of chivaJry of old 

When knights perform'd atcheivments bold 

Fortus the great the strong and brave 

Who oft had stretch'd his hand to save 

A helpless damsel from a foe 

And laid full many a ruffian low 

Travers'd the earth an errant knight 

And always conquering in fight. 

When travelling with his squire one day 

Beneath the burning sunny ray 

A damsel not far off he saw 

Standing before a castle door 

Brave Fortus turn'd his courser straight 

And ask'd admission at the gate 

His small request was not denied 

And in the knight and squire hied 



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[ 179 ] 

A table then was quickly set 

The hungry knight : sat down to eat 

And when refresh 'd and cool'd they brought 

His steed with trappings richly wrought 

The damsel coming to him said 

Swear by the honors of that head 

To grant the boon that I demand 

And bring it me with thine own hand 

' ' I grant thy boon ' ' the warrior cries 

And to his steed impatient flies 

Then ask'd her wish " It is to bring " 

*' Within these walls a golden ring " 

" The expedition sure is hard " 

" The precious ring is under guard " 

" Of knights and hosts and Hons too " 

' ' And winged dragons not a few ' ' 

' ' But if thou find a certain cord ' ' 

" Then shalt thou conquer with thy sword " 

" The ring is in a gloomy wood " 

" Which many a century has stood " 

* ' The cord on which depends thy all ' ' 

' ' Whether thou stand or whether fall ' ' 

' ' Is near and fastened on a tree ' ' 

' ' Cut that and gain the ring for me ' ' 

" When thou the fatal cord dost cleave " 

' ' Thy mettled steed at distance leave ' ' 

*' For if thy courser thou dost bring " 

" Thou canst not cut th' enchanted string " 

The damsel then mark'd out the way 

In which his expedition lay 

Swift mounted then our fearless knight 



[ 180 ] 

And quickly he was out of sight 

He took his path and soon he found 

Himself upon the woody ground 

He then alighted from his horse 

And swift pursued his destin'd course 

He found the cord without delay 

He rais'd his sword and it gave way 

Nor that alone for while he stood 

A groan ascended from the wood 

The forest fell and quick display'd 

Hosts knights and squires in arms array'd 

Brave Fortus stood as still as death 

But soon recovering his breath 

A knight stepp'd forward from the host 

Who seem'd to be the army's boast 

And with his frowns and lowering look 

Courageous Fortus he bespoke 

"Whoe'er thou art who durst appear " 

*' Before our soldiers faces here " 

" Tell unto me thy true intent " 

'* To get a gold ring art thou sent ? " 

' ' For if thou art I challenge thee ' ' 

' ' Within the lists to combat me ' ' 

" And if thou take my life away " 

" The ring I freely give to thee ' ' 

Fortus accepts this challenge fair 

And both the combatants prepare. 

While Fortus sought his horse behold 

A sword of solid burnish 'd gold 

Appeared before his ravish 'd sight 

And scatter'd round it radiant light 



C 181 1 

While round his head a Phantom flew 

Whose garments were of shining blue 

" Take it and use it 'gainst your foe 

She said and vanish 'd in a airy show 

He took the sword and in a scabbard plac'd 

Which in a belt hung dangling at his waist 

Then mounted on his fiery steed 

He rode up to the lists with speed 

Where his opponent arm'd did stand 

With sword uplifted in his hand 

Then fierce together they engage 

Like lions fighting in a rage 

Doubtful the combat long remain'd 

Nor were the blows at all restrain 'd 

Both with glory's love inspired 

Both with equal courage fir'd 

Both were obstinate to yield 

Neither would give up the field 

And now the strength of the strange knight 

Begins to fail in bloody fight 

Fortus observes — his strength renew 'd 

The knight he flies, & is pursu'd 

The flying knight could not withstand 

The force of Fortus' steady hand 

But conquer 'd fell by Fortus' sword 

Threw down his blade and own'd him lord 

Fortus, Compassion in his eyes 

Assists the fall'n knight to rise 

Gives healing balms — it was too late 

His sword had done the work of fate 

The knight fell down upon the plain 



[ 182 ] 

Never to rise on earth again. 

One hostile knight now being dead 

Fortus proceeds with steady tread 

Not far he w ent before another 

The fall'n knight's revengeful brother 

Approach'd & challeng'd — fought & bled 

And soon lay number M with the dead 

The Hosts now see their Champions lay 

Dead in the field from bloody fray 

Unmov'd in silence long they stood 

Doubting to go again to blood, 

Or to make peace with Fortus bold 

By giving the ring of solid gold 

But now their Generals pointing out 

Their strength, remov'd their doubt 

They show'd two Dragons in their ire 

Snorting thick clouds of smoke & fire 

They look'd and in each strengthen'd hand 

They place sword dagger, lance, or brand 

With coward step along they go 

To meet a single but a dreadful foe. 

Fortus beholds — recovers breath. 

Then arms, to do the work of death, 

Then like a Lion bounding oer his foes 

Swift as the lightning, he to combat rose 

Fairies unseen now hover o'er his head 

Whilst he sends thousands to the gloomy dead 

Unhurt he stands amid ten thousand foes 

And deals unwearied & effectual blows ; 

Six score & twenty thousand 'gan the fray 

Six score alone surviv'd that dreadful day 



C 183 ] 

Ah ! hear the groans of those that bled 

In that sad plain, o'erlaid with dead 

Ah ! hear those brothers & those sons deplore 

Their brothers, fathers, slain in cruel war 

Oh hear those heartfelt & those saddest groans 

Here one for father & for brother moans. 

Fortus who would not quit the field 
Till every foe was forc'd to yeild 
To tender Pity now transform'd his wrath 
And from the bloody field pursued his path 
As he from downcast look upturnd his eyes 
He sees the ramparts of a castle rise 
In adamantine chains two dragons stood 
Snorting thick smoke and thirsting dire for blood 
"Another trial yet ! " brave Fortus cried 
" Have I O damsel not enough been tried 
" Yet still at this I will not yet repine 
" If I can conquer then shalt thou be mine 
Thus having said he added not a word 
But straight for Conquest drew his pondrous sword. 
Then on he rush'd upon them in his pow'r 
Who can describe that wonder-working hour 
My Muse is weak O how then could she tell 
The wondrous things which at that time befel 
Suifice it then to say long time they fought 
And Fortus' conquest with his blood was bought 
The dragons lay extended on the ground 
Deep peirc'd with many a fatal wound 
And Fortus' conquer'd — Generous Muse 
No praises to the brave refuse 
In tuneful notes his name prolong 



1 184 :\ 

Be that the burthen of your song 
Fortus though bloody would not wait 
But flew into the castle gate 
Before his face the Phantom blue 
Bade, & the gates wide open flew 
He enter'd when before his sight 
Appear'd a lady heav'nly bright 
She held the ring without alloy 
Who can describe brave Fortus' joy 
He flew as on the eagle's wing 
The lady rose & gave the ring 
He bow'd, departed, heard a bell 
As soon as which — the castle fell 
He look'd but not a trace was found 
The place was level with the ground 
Fortus now mounts his mettled steed 
And rides along at fullest speed 
O'er rising hills & sinking vales 
Oer pleasant plains & flowery dales 
And now before his happy eyes 
The Damsel's towers at length arise 
The steed his master's voice perceives 
And bounding on each forest leaves 
Fortus now leaping from his steed 
Leaves him in open plains to feed 
He lingers not he cannot wait 
But knocks at the high casrie gate 
The castle's portals open'd wide 
And in the noble Fortus hied 
He gave the ring to her he lov'd 
For now his constancy was prov'd 



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C 185 ] 

They lov'd — & soon in wedlock's bands 
In nuptial vows were join' d their hands 

FINIS 

R W Emerson. 



CONTRIBUTIONS 

TO 

*THE GIFT' AND 'THE DIADEM' 

BY 

R. W. EMERSON 



The Garden of Plants 


The Gift 


1844 


The Poet's Apology 


n a 


1845 


Dirge 


iC n 


1845 


Loss and Gain 


The Diadem 


1846 


A Fable 


(( li 


1846 


The Fore-Runners 


a (( 


1846 


The World-Soul 


(( a 


1847 



INDEX 



AGASSIZ,L. 77,127 

his name on a rock in Switzerland, 108, 109 

Agent for Lectures, '^'^ 

Alcott, A. B. 3, 12 

Ames, Charles G. 154 

' Anti-Slavery lecture only less bad than Slavery,' 106 

Art Union, 67 

Atlantic Monthly, They 115 

BANCROFT, GEORGE, 93 

Bartol, Rev. Dr. 119 

Beecher, Rev. H. W. 122 

Bellows, Rev. H. W. 1 1 9, 1 2 1 , 1 22 

Binney, Horace, 166, 168 
Bradford, S., 1, 3, 8, 9, 12, 88, 105, 110, 116, 117, 123, 134, 

146, 165, 168, 169 

Letter to him 149,164 

Brazer ^;5. Cicero, 14 

Brown, John, Verses on, 1 36, 1 3 7 

Brown Meeting in Salem, 1 72 

CAREY, E. L., 40, 44 

his generosit}", 22 

^nd The Gift, 18,24 
Carlyle, T., 35, 56, 37, 38, 40, 66, 72 

Hist, of French Revolution, 2 

Miscellanies, Bargain for, 4 

his coming to America, 5 



[ 190 ] 



Carlyle, T. (continued) 




profits from Hist, of French Revolution, 


10 


Lawrence's portrait of, 


37 


his portrait, 


40 


and early copy of Cromwell, 


46 


and his Cromwell, 


50, 51 


and Richter, 


64 


and draft for £50., 


68, 70 


' Emerson's voice the only one he hears,' 


85 


his daguerreotype, 


95, 96, 97 


Channing, W. E., 18, 


20, 21, 24, 32, 33 


Obscurity of his Poetry, 


26 


Eminence as a Poet, 


30 


Emendation 


31 


Chapman and Hall, 


46,47 


Childs, Geo. W., 


160, 161 


Clark, Miss Frances, 


163 


Clarke, Rev. Dr. J. F., 


125 


Clough, A. H., his autobiography, 


115 


Collyer, Robert, 


154 


Columbus dying. To, 


27,32 


Communion, Observance of. 


15 


Conway, Moncure D., 


122, 136, 138 


DANA, 


77 


Dexter, Timothy, 


25 


Diadem, The, 25., 


36, 38, 39, 52, 53 


Dial, The, 


19,24 


its last Number, 


33 


Dickson, Miss Nanc}^ 


3, 121 


Dirge, The, its origin. 


30 


D'Orsay, his portrait of Carlyle, 


41 


Duyckinck, E. A., 


61 



EMERSON, EDWARD, 6 

Emerson, Miss Ellen, 106, 109, 130, 160, 161, 163, 

164, 167, 169, 174 

Emerson, Mrs., the mother of R. W. E., 90 

Emerson, R. W., as the American poet, 25 

his unproductiveness, 109 

contributions to The Gift and to The Diadem^ 187 

Emerson, William, 72, 77^ 95 

his death, 143 

FIELDS, J. T., • 114 

Forbes, Mrs., Letter of R. W. E. to Miss Russell, 132 

her portrait by W. H. F. jr., 142, 147, 153 

her portrait saved from fire, 155 

Fortus, The History of, 1 78 

Fremont, J. C, 110,112 

Frothingham, Rev. Dr., 125 

Frothingham, Rev. O. B., 125 

Fuller, Margaret, 54, 83 

incident at a concert, 84 

Fumess, Frank, 95 

Fumess, W. H., jr.. 43, 84, 95 

engraving of portrait of R. W. E. and approval of family, 152 

present location of portrait, 158 

GANNETT, Rev. Dr. E. S., 60 

Gift, The, 18 

Gilman, S., 16 

Godwin, Parke, 75 

Goethe, 85 

Farhenlehre, 8 

his greatness, 81 

Greeley, Horace, 46 



c; 192 ] 



Griswold, Rufus W., 




27, i 


39,41, 55 


Gutekunst, F., 






165 


HANDKERCHIEF with House that Jack built, 






88 


Hart, A., 42, 45, 


48, 


50, ( 


31,63,66 


Hedge, F.H., 1,43,61 


,6i 


5,64, 


, 114, 122 


Heeren's Egypt, 






8 


Heine, H., 






113 


Hering, Dr. C, 






41 


Hilliard & Gray, 






2 


Hoar, Miss Elizabeth, 






31,54 


Hudson, Charles, 






167 


Hunt,Benj.P., 2,116, 


119, 


, 122, 123 


JACKSON, Dr., 






110 


James, Henry, 






75 


Johnson, Rev. S,, 






125 


KANE, Dr. E. K., his book. 






93 


Kay, James, 






61 


Kossuth, Louis, 






80 


LAMB, CHARLES, 






1,42 


MS. of Dissertation on Roast Pig, 






162 


Langdon, Walter, 




88, 


, 103, 104 


Lawrence, S., the artist, 






93 


Leaves of Grass, 






107 


Lectures, ' a ner\'ous disorder,* 






149 


Lectures and Western telegrams, 






152 


Lee, Mrs., 






40 


Lessing and Voltaire, 






85 


Leutze, E., 






42 


Little and Brown, 






4 



I 193 ] 



Longfellow, H. W., 


127 


Lowell, J. R., 


127 


Lynch, Miss Annie, 


26,93 


MANN, HORACE, 


119 


Mendelssohn, Father, Son, and Grandson, 


86 


Mitchell, D. G., 


77 


Mitchell, Dr. S. W., and The Atlantic, 


133 


verses on The Strasburg Clock, 


135, 137 


Montaigne, 


67 


Morrison, Mrs. A. D. 


65 


Mott, Mrs. Lucretia, 


129 


Moxon, Mrs., ^ 


162 


Munroe, 


2,46,47,48, 114 


Mcllhenney, W., of The Athenaeum, 


98 


OLD AGE, a novel experience, 


133 


Osgood, Miss Lucy, 


27, 81, 86, 128, 130 


PARKER, THEODORE, 


40, 119, 122, 125 


Thay-o-dore, 


101 


Parsons, Theophilus, 


8 


Phillips and Sampson, 


113 


Phillips, Jonathan, 


123 


Phillips, Wendell, 


122, 125 


Plato, 


67 


Powers, his ' Greek Slave ' ; bust of Webster, 


84 


* Preferring the putty to the painter,' 


119 


Prescott, Mr., 


113 


Price of tickets to Lectures, 


75 


Pugh, T. B., 


145 


Putnam, Mrs. Lowell, 


127 



I 194 ] 

RALPH, 121, 125 

Randolph, P. S., 95, 105, 123, 129 

Reade, Charles, 93 

Resurrection, The, 16 

Richter, Jean Paul, 85 

and Carlyle, 64 

Russell, Dr., 40 

Russell, Miss, on going to Philadelphia, 132 



SARTAIN, JOHN, 37,41,44 

Sartain, Miss Emily, 151, 153, 155 

Sartor Resartus, 2 
Saturday Club, 127, 147, 148, 169 

Scherb, 81,83 

Schiller's Birthday, 1 1 7 

Smith, Sidney, Memoirs, 107 

and no-Popery people, 138 

Song of the Bell, translation of the, 72, 73 

Star Course of Lectures, 145 
Steinbriick, the artist, his daughter's admiration for Channing, 101 

Sterling, John. 7 

Storax, 1 3 

Stowe, Mrs., 113 

Sumner, Charles, 128, 130 

in Philadelphia, HO 

Swedenborg, 67 



TALBOT of East Machias, 79 

Tennyson, a beautiful half of a poet, 7 

Thoreau, H. D., 60, 62, 103 

Tickets to Lectures, the price of, 75 



UNCONSCIOUS arrogance of Christians, 1 2 1 

Unitarian brawl, 119 

VERY, JONES, 8 



WEBB, Mr., his school. 


6,26 


,52,66,71, 121, 159 


Whewell's Plurality of Worlds, 




98 


Whipple, E. P., 




23 


Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass, 




107 


Whitwell, Mrs., her school. 


66, 


71, 88, 123, 159, 164 


Wilde, H. G., 




169 


Wiley and Putnam, 




46,47,48, 50,61 


Williamson, Passmore, 




108 


Wisconsin, The Heroic Age of, 




92 


Wister, Dr. Caspar, 




97 


Wister, Mrs. A. L., 




95, 106, 131, 133 


World-Soul, The, 




55 


ZOROASTRIAN element. 




115 


Zschocke's Journal of a Poor Vicar, 




22 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



;C 12 Vi.:^ 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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